Nicholas Leader, who was sent up from Constantinople to take Frank Power's place in Widdin, had already had an adventurous career, and had smelt powder in many lands. After seeing service with the British troops in Canada, he resigned on the declaration of war by France upon Germany in 1870, and took service with the French arms. He was attached to the ill fated army of Bourbaki, and was interned with other prisoners of war in Switzerland. Afterwards, when the Carlist insurrection broke out in Spain, he joined the standard of Don Carlos, and took part in the fierce guerilla warfare which the Carlists waged against the Spanish Government. The war correspondents of those fighting days in Spain were as dare-devil a crew as ever lived; and Leader described to me with many a laugh the circumstances under which he first met Edmund O'Donovan, another Irishman, as gay and reckless as himself. Leader was in command of a small fort in the north of Spain during the height of the insurrection, when one day he espied a strange figure clad in a long, dilapidated overcoat approaching the walls. The Spanish sentries yelled to the suspicious visitor to halt; and as he took no notice of them, they fired on him, and the bullets kicked up the dust all round the stranger. The only result, however, was that he increased his pace, and came on at the double until he reached the walls off the fort amid a rain of bullets. "Cease firing, ye blackguards!" he shouted in the simple dialect of Southern Cork. "I'm Edmund O'Donovan, and how the blazes can I get in unless you open the gate!" Leader was summoned to interpret the strange language of the foreigner, and he let him in. Thus it was that Edmund O'Donovan, who was attached to the Government troops, walked alone into the enemy's fortress. Nicholas Leader, after all his wanderings, found a grave in Turkish soil; for after a few weeks in Widdin, he joined the army of Suleiman Pasha at the Shipka Pass, and died there of fever. About the time that Leader left Widdin the town was in a state of suppressed excitement, for every one knew that the declaration of war was imminent, and the slightest incident was sufficient to cause a demonstration. Once I went with two others by boat to a small island on the Danube, where there were numbers of wild duck. We got to work upon them in great style, and soon had a full bag; but when we were in the middle of the fun, half a squadron of Roumanian cavalry came galloping down to the opposite bank to see what the firing was about. It would not have taken much at that moment to provoke a conflict. CHAPTER IV. FROM WIDDIN TO PLEVNA.