'Her figure came before me as I saw it last--the memory of her voice choked in tears, and the tremulous pressure of her hand, while the warning bugles blew, and it was too late to speak--too late to explain! 'Ere long a dark group appeared advancing, with glittering spears, out of a valley, as Sale's command attained the crest of a hill. It was Sir Richmond, with the ladies and the Lancers! 'A shout burst from the soldiers, and actually breaking their ranks, they rushed forward, and with loud cheers greeted all, but chiefly Lady Sale and her widowed daughter. 'In another moment I had both Mabel and Bella in my arms, till Vassal drew the latter from me. Many now met friends from whom they had long been parted; as if in death. Wives threw themselves into the arms of husbands, daughters embraced fathers, and the artillery fired a salute that shook the hills of Jubeais. '"Papa--I do not see papa!" said Mabel anxiously. '"Lay your head on my breast, darling, and I will whisper all!" '"He is dead, then; and poor mamma too is gone! I have no one in the world----" '"But me, darling!" said I, as I kissed her tears away and assisted her to remount. 'Here ends my story. We were to have been married when we returned to Old England had not events occurred which I cannot tell you now, but the results of which are swiftly passing away, and I shall be soon able to call her my own after long years of waiting, having had enough and to spare of Afghanistan and the Khyber Mountains.' [Illustration: Chapter 7 headpiece] DICK STAPLES OF THE 'QUEEN'S OWN,' [Illustration: Chapter 7 tailpiece] DICK STAPLES OF THE 'QUEEN'S OWN.' When I came back, boys, after my fighting in India was over, you laughed at my old red coat (for I had no other)--a trifle tattered, I dare say it was, as well it might be, after all I had gone through in it latterly; but you never forgot, boys, that it was the old Red Rag, that tells of England's glory! The company to which I belonged--the Grenadiers of the 'Queen's Own' (for Grenadiers were not abolished till soon after the time of the Indian Mutiny)--was cantoned at Jubbulpore, in the month of July, when all Bengal was seething with revolt, and murder and outrage were occurring everywhere. All was quiet as yet in Jubbulpore, which I may tell you is in Berar, on the tableland of the Deccan; but ugly rumours came from time to time about the 50th and 52nd Bengal Sepoy regiments, who were stationed at Nagode, the nearest post to us, and which, of all the Bengal army, were eventually the last to revolt. Neither tongue nor pen can describe what we--the handful of Europeans among the millions of India--endured at that terrible time, when the souls of fathers and mothers, of husbands and wives, daily grew sick with anxiety, while the atrocities of Delhi and Cawnpore, and more than a hundred other places, made our soldiers go mad in their longing for revenge. But all that is history now.