Tom slipped out that afternoon, paid Elsley's pittance of rent at his old lodgings; bought him a few necessary articles, and lent him, without saying anything, a few more. Elsley sat all day as one in a dream, moaning to himself at intervals, and following Tom vacantly with his eyes, as he moved about the room. Excitement, misery, and opium were fast wearing out body and mind, and Tom put him to bed that evening, as he would have put a child. Tom walked out into the Strand to smoke in the fresh air, and think, in spite of himself, of that fair saint from whom he was so perversely flying. Gay girls slithered past him, looked round at him, but in vain; those two great sad eyes hung in his fancy, and he could see nothing else. Ah--if she had but given him back his money--why, what a fool he would have made of himself! Better as it was. He was meant to be a vagabond and an adventurer to the last; and perhaps to find at last the luck which had flitted away before him. He passed one of the theatre doors; there was a group outside, more noisy and more earnest than such groups are wont to be; and ere he could pass through them, a shout from within rattled the doors with its mighty pulse, and seemed to shake the very walls. Another; and another!--What was it? Fire? No. It was the news of Alma. And the group surged to and fro outside, and talked, and questioned, and rejoiced; and smart gents forgot their vulgar pleasures, and looked for a moment as if they too could have fought--had fought--at Alma; and sinful girls forgot their shame, and looked more beautiful than they had done for many a day, as, beneath the flaring gas-light, their faces glowed for a while with noble enthusiasm, and woman's sacred pity, while they questioned Tom, taking him for an officer, as to whether he thought there were many killed. "I am no officer: but I have been in many a battle, and I know the Russians well, and have seen how they fight; and there is many a brave man killed, and many a one more will be." "Oh, does it hurt them much?" asked one poor thing. "Not often," quoth Tom. "Thank God, thank God!" and she turned suddenly away, and with the impulsive nature of her class, burst into violent sobbing and weeping. Poor thing! perhaps among the men who fought and fell that day was he to whom she owed the curse of her young life; and after him her lonely heart went forth once more, faithful even in the lowest pit. "You are strange creatures, women, women!" thought Tom: "but I knew that many a year ago. Now then--the game is growing fast and furious, it seems. Oh, that I may find myself soon in the thickest of it!" So said Tom Thurnall; and so said Major Campbell, too, that night, as he prepared everything to start next morning to Southampton. "The better the day, the better the deed," quoth he. "When a man is travelling to a better world, he need not be afraid of starting on a Sunday." CHAPTER XXV. THE BANKER AND HIS DAUGHTER.