When the battle--the last of the strife--was fairly over, a requiem for the dead was solemnly held, according to the Russian ritual, in a tent upon the field, where numbers of ladies, the wives--and in too many sorrowful instances the widows--of Russian officers were gliding about like angels of mercy, ministering to the wants of the wounded. While leaving Dochtouroff to hold the position, Tchernaieff withdrew to the camp at Deligrad. Meanwhile where was Cecil Falconer, or Montgomerie as he had been learning to call himself now? CHAPTER XIX. WOUNDED. Away rearward from the field, out of all range of musketry and cannon, Cecil's maddened horse--maddened by the agony of a mighty wound--swept at a furious rate, while he--blinded with equal agony and unable to guide or control it--clung to his holsters or the pommel of the saddle, as it bore him on he knew not whither; but it rushed in its wild career down a wooded valley, actually treading on its own entrails by the way, till it fell heavily with its rider in the depth of a coppice, and there both lay, to all appearance, dying, unseen by mortal eyes. Down sank the sun beyond those mountains which are spurs of the Balkans, a globe of fiery flame in an angry and cloudy sky; the day was done, and with it many a human life! Cecil fainted soon after being thrown from his horse, but ere he did so there came over him a strange dreamy wonder of how the battle was progressing, or rather how the tide of war was going, for in the distance he could still hear the cannon on the heights of Djunis. Anon the din of the battle passed away, and on his partially recovering consciousness the stillness of death surrounded the place where Cecil lay helpless beside his dead horse--a stillness broken only by the voice of the vila, or when the damp dewy wings of the night-birds brushed his cheek when whirring past him. The snow-clad summits of the lofty hills that overlook the valley of the Morava on one side, and that of the Timok on the other, shone pale and white in the light of the uprisen moon. At times, not far from him, he could hear the snort of a wild boar or the cry of a wolf, scared by the recent din of battle perhaps; and now he became conscious of the rush of a mountain runnel that ran near him, but which, sorely athirst though he was, loss of blood had rendered him too feeble to reach. Close by him, with holsters, housing and gilded martingale, lay the dead body of his caparisoned horse, the blood of which was freely mingled with his own. The hours of the night passed slowly on. The moon waned; but the stars grew brighter. Tender thoughts of Mary and all their mutual past, and of the future which now too probably would never be, came to him at times; and in imagination he more than once thought that her voice--but curiously mingled with that of Margarita--came to his almost death-drowsy ear.