half-frozen and more than half-starved, a rabble still to suffer frightfully at the hands of the dashing Cossacks. Think of the untold misery. Think of the very many thousands of men, all in the flower of manhood, who perished in this Russian campaign. Then recollect that the overpowering ambition of this "Little Corporal," this commoner, this distinguished artillery officer, was chiefly responsible. France needed no larger territory. Honour and glory could have been won for her emperor and her people by this lost energy, this sad loss of young vigour, applied to her own internal affairs, to commerce and other matters. Instead, France wept at the loss of its young manhood and groaned beneath the burden of excessive war taxation, while the years which followed were to see the downfall of the empire which was then being created, the loss of all these provinces won by the sword at the price of the misery and death of thousands and thousands of innocent and would-be peaceful people. Napoleon may have been great--he was, admittedly, a military genius and a man of unsurpassed courage and ambition--but the thousands who went to their doom at his bidding, or who sent thousands of their fellows to their end because of his actions, bear a terrible testimony against him. His deathbed amidst those peaceful surroundings at St. Helena, high up over the smiling sea, was a glaring contrast to the deathbed of many and many a poor fellow who followed or opposed his fortunes. But let us turn from a subject such as this to the fortunes of as bright a lad as ever set foot on the Peninsula. We left Tom acting in a manner almost inexplicable. See him now, then, with that door shattered and burst wide open, and himself returned to the head of the stairs up which the rascals from below were rushing. And look at the two who were with him. One, a stout jovial man of medium height, and possessed of ruddy features which showed resolution and energy, stood at his side armed with a length of splintered woodwork. A second, taller perhaps, thin and cadaverous, and of sallow Spanish complexion, stood in rear gripping our hero's stiletto. Both were more or less in rags, and grimed with long confinement in a noisome prison. But in each case fearless eyes looked out through flashing glasses. And down below, coming upward helter-skelter, were a dozen rascals, one bearing a lantern, elbowing one another, firing their weapons haphazard, shouting at the three above them. "Silence!" Tom commanded at the pitch of his voice. "Silence for a moment. Now, lay down your arms and go back to your room. You are surrounded. You are prisoners. The man who dares to fire another weapon will be taken outside and shot instantly." Gaping faces looked up at him, and then into the eyes of their fellows. Two men at the bottom of the stairs turned to run. And then one of the leaders called upon them not to be cowards.