The rain rendered our nights and days in the trenches simply horrible; as we had to shiver there for four-and-twenty hours, literally in mud that rose nearly to our knees, and was sometimes frozen--especially towards the darkest and earliest hours of the morning, when the cold would cause even strong and brave fellows almost to sob with weakness and debility, while we huddled together like sheep for animal warmth, listening the while, perhaps, for a sound that might indicate a Russian mine beneath us. Those who had tobacco smoked, of course, and shared it freely with less fortunate comrades, who had none; and under circumstances such as ours, great indeed was the solace of a pipe, though some found their tobacco too wet to smoke; then the Russians and the rain were cursed alike. The latter also often reduced the biscuits in our havresacks to a wet and dirty pulp; but hunger made us thankful to have it, even in that condition. "By Jove," one would say, "how the rain comes down! Awful, isn't it?" "Won't spoil our uniforms, Bill, anyhow." "No, lads, they are past spoiling," said I, and often had to add, "keep your firelocks under your greatcoats, men, and look to your ammunition." And such care was imperatively necessary, for on dark nights especially we never knew the moment when an attempt to scour the trenches might bring on another Inkermann. So we would sit cowering between the gabions, while ever and anon the fiery bombs, often shot at random, came in quick succession through the dark sky of night, making bright and glittering arcs as they sped on their message of destruction, sometimes falling short and bursting in mid-air, or on the earth and throwing up a column of dust and stones, and sometimes fairly into the trenches, scattering death and mutilation among us. Erelong, as the season drew on, we had the snow to add to our miseries, and for many an hour under the lee of a gabion I have sat, half awake and half torpid, watching the white flakes falling, like glittering particles, athwart the slanting moonlight on the pale and upturned faces and glistening eyes of the dead, on their black and gaping wounds, and tattered uniform; for many perished nightly in the trenches, on some occasions over a hundred; and at times and places their bodies were so frozen to the earth, that to remove or tear them up was impossible, so they had to be left where they lay, or be covered up _pro tem_, with a little loose soil, broken by a sapper's pickaxe. And with the endurance of all this bodily misery, I had the additional grief that no letters ever came from Estelle for me. My dream-castle was beginning to crumble down. I began to feel vaguely that something had been taken out of my life, that life itself was less worth having now, and that the beauty of the past was fading completely away. I had but one conviction or wish--that I had never met, had never known, or had never learned to love her. CHAPTER XXXIX.--A MAIL FROM ENGLAND.