While they were conducting him for his subsistence and safe custody to the Burger Hospital, the unfortunate urchin was met by his mother, who flew at him with reproaches for his long absence, and from her it was soon ascertained that she had never been in the Turkish camp, and that the boy’s father was dead. After this unlucky meeting the boy, taken before the authorities, confessed that he had carried to the enemy intelligence that several guns on the defences had been rendered unserviceable; that the wheaten loaves were no longer so white nor so heavy as they had been, that the commissariat bread was become black and scarcely eatable; that many soldiers had died of such victual, and that the garrison had lost all courage for fighting. After endeavouring, with cunning beyond his years, but in vain, to fix on others the guilt of having instigated his treason, this precocious criminal, for whom whipping would have answered every legitimate purpose of punishment, was beheaded. Two soldiers, taken in the act of deserting, suffered with him. The practice of straying beyond the lines for the real, or alleged, purpose of seeking for plunder, in the ruins of the suburb, had become frequent, and it was thought necessary to check proceedings so favourable to desertion and treason by this example, and by severe edicts. FOOTNOTES: [11] Kolschitzki’s services would appear to have made a deep impression on the public mind. Several narratives of his adventures were published at the time; and his portrait, in his Turkish costume, figures in the frontispiece of most of them.—E. CHAPTER XII. 23rd August to 8th September.