class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">CHAPTER XXXVII.   MR. BUTLER FOR DUTY ON———

CHAPTER XXXVIII.     TONY WAITING FOR ORDERS

CHAPTER XXXIX.   THE MAJOR'S MISSION

CHAPTER XL.   THE MAJOR'S TRIALS

CHAPTER XLI.   EAVESDROPPING

CHAPTER XLII.   MARK LYLE'S LETTER

CHAPTER XLIII.   THE MAJOR AT BADEN

CHAPTER XLIV.   THE MESSENGER'S FIRST JOURNEY

CHAPTER XLV.   A SHOCK FOR TONY

CHAPTER XLVI.   "THE BAG NO. 18"

CHAPTER XLVII.   ADRIFT

CHAPTER XLVIII.   "IN RAGS"

CHAPTER XLIX.   MET AND PARTED

CHAPTER L.   THE SOLDIER OF MISFORTUNE

CHAPTER LI.   A PIECE OF GOOD TIDINGS

CHAPTER LII.   ON THE CHIAJA AT NIGHT

CHAPTER LIII.   UNPLEASANT RECKONINGS

CHAPTER LIV.   SKEFF DAMER TESTED

CHAPTER LV.   AMONGST THE GARIBALDIANS

CHAPTER LVI.   THE HOSPITAL AT CAVA

CHAPTER LVII.   AT TONY'S BEDSIDE

CHAPTER LVIII.   THE SIXTH OF SEPTEMBER

CHAPTER LIX.   AN AWKWARD MOMENT

CHAPTER LX.   A DECK WALK

CHAPTER LXI.   TONY AT HOME AGAIN

CHAPTER LXII.   SKEFF DAMER'S LAST "PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL"

CHAPTER LXIII.   AT THE COTTAGE BESIDE THE CAUSEWAY

CHAPTER LXIV.   THE END

CHAPTER I. THE COTTAGE BESIDE "THE CAUSEWAY"

In a little cleft, not deep enough to be a gorge, between two grassy hills, traversed by a clear stream, too small to be called a river, too wide to be a rivulet, stood, and, I believe, still stands, a little cottage, whose one bay-window elevates it above the condition of a laboring-man's, and shows in its spacious large-paned proportions pretensions to taste as well as station. From the window a coast-line can be seen to which nothing in the kingdom can find the equal. It takes in the bold curve of shore from the "White Rocks" to the Giant's Causeway,—a sweep of coast broken by jutting headland and promontory, with sandy bays nestling between gigantic walls of pillared rock, and showing beneath the green water the tessellated pavement of those broken shafts which our superstition calls Titanic. The desolate rock and ruin of Dunluce, the fairy bridge of Carrig-a-Rede, are visible; and on a commonly clear day Staffa can be seen, its outline only carrying out the strange formation of the columnar rocks close at band.

This cottage, humble enough in itself, is not relieved in its aspect by the culture around it A small vegetable garden, rudely fenced with a dry-stone wall, is the only piece of vegetation; for the cutting winds of the North Sea are unfriendly to trees, and the light sandy soil of the hills only favors the fern and the foxglove. Of these, indeed, the growth is luxuriant, and the path which leads down from the high-road to the cottage is cut through what might be called a grove of these leafy greeneries. This same path was not much traversed, and more than once within the year was the billhook required to keep it open, so little intercourse was maintained between the cottage and the world, whose frontier lay about a mile off. A widow and her son, with one servant, were the occupants. It had been a fishing-lodge of her husband's in more prosperous days. His memory and the cheapness of life in the neighborhood had decided her in choosing it, lonely and secluded as it was; and here she had passed fourteen years, her whole care being the education of her boy, a task to which she addressed herself with all the zeal and devotion of her nature. There was, it is true, a village school at Ballintray, about three miles off, to which he went in summer; but when the dark