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As impartial inquirers into the behaviour of Our Jack in the Crimea, we must not shrink from an allusion to a somewhat delicate matter in connexion with his life in camp. Divers credible witnesses roundly assert, that he has manifested a very characteristic indifference to, or insensibility regard. ing, the laws of meum and tuum. For example, he is accused of manifesting such a partiality to quadrupeds, that he appropriates all he finds unguarded. "Whenever," says one writer, "an officer loses his horse, he sends over to the sailors' camp for it, and there he is tolerably sure to find it."

Another authority asserts, that Our Jack will accommodate any party with a steed, for a consideration. A droll story is told of a young officer who went to the sailors' camp to purchase a horse. He made his want known, and Our Jack thereupon thoughtfully turned his quid, and said

"Ah! how I does wish your honor had a comed up yesterday. We had five reg'lar good 'uns-Harabs some on

'em was, but they was all bought up by a specklater from Ballyklava.' "So they're all gone?'

“All, your honor. But (with his face brightening up suddenly) if you should happen to want a sporting outand-out dromeydairy, I've got one, as I can let you have cheap!'

"And as he spoke, Jack pointed, in great triumph, to the melancholy-looking quadruped, which he had moored stem and stern,' as he expressed it, to the ground, and was much disappointed when he found there was no chance of a sale in that line."

Well, well, there never was a diamond without some flaw, and as concerns Our Jack's alleged peccadilloes, we are sure that he commits them as much for the "fun of the thing," as for any other motive, and probably, also, he really has but a foggy notion of what constitutes a lawful prize on the field of war. And rely upon it, that many a strayed steed would have been irrecoverably lost to the service had not our thoughful Jack benevolently taken it under his protection.

Reviewing Our Jack's campaign in the Black Sea and Crimea, from first to last, we find that he has endured protracted, and almost unparalleled, hardships without murmur; he has been exposed to perils by sea and by land, to deadly disease, and to many other dangers and tribulations which would have daunted any 'spirit but his own. He has repeatedly received the warm thanks of the Commander-in-Chief of the army for his assistance; and his own Admiral has thanked him for his "good conduct and gallantry." On the whole, therefore, we have no reason to suppose that Our Jack has, in any respect, degenerated; but on the contrary, we think he has proved himself every way worthy of his name and fame. taking him all in all, notwithstanding his little foibles and eccentricities, is he not a most noble fellow? Ay, that he is; and every true British heart will ever warm towards him, and be proud of him, for what would become of the British empire itself were it not for OUR JACK?

And

THE OLD HOUSE OF DARKBROTHERS.-PART II.

THE kind reader will come back with me to the period at which our narrative originally set out, and to the consideration of some of the other characters I had the pleasure of then introducing to his notice in the Red Lane, and "under the greenwood tree" of bonnie Earlsdale. And first I must record, that between the O'Donel family and Miss Beaufoy, I grieve to say, there was scarce an acquaintance. The present vicar's mode of managing his parish, and his success therein, was vinegar - and - gall to the poor and proud lady, who could not help considering the activity of the "new man" as a practical animadversion on his predecessor's inertness, his generosity as a satire on her brother's avarice, and his great popularity as a posthumous libel on the general character of the dear but unattractive deceased. Grace she seemed actually to dislike, and spoke of her doings in the parish and among the poor as "Quixotic Pharisaism,' "love of excitement," "being righteous over-much," "fidgety benevolence," &c. Yet, strange to say, she constantly inquired after her, and seemed to take a strange pleasure in hearing of, and commenting on, her conduct. Many of her remarks had reached Grace's ears, and only caused a smile; and, in return, she had often striven to overcome Miss Beaufoy's prejudices, by demonstrations of respectful kindness; but, unhappily, they were met with everything which was chilly and repulsive. Frequent offerings of fruit went from the Vicarage down to Darkbrothers, and were politely declined. Grace had, again and again, offered to drive her out; but "Miss B. preferred horse exercise." The poor lady seemed soured with life, and her temper waxed sterner and more bitter as age came on. It was soon destined to meet a heavy trial.

The gipseys, whom we left in the wood, had pitched their camp on a common near Darkbrothers' gate, but, allured by the shady temptation of boughs and green leaves, the audacious nomades had actually entered in through the dilapidated piers, and en

camped amidst the rank grass under the shadow of an old wood, which ran all round the ruin, and within a hun dred yards of the house. Nor was this all. One of the women, the same who had spoken rudely to Grace, was extremely ill, and the weather being sultry, they had made her bed up in the open air, and a hideous and ghastly object she presented, lying in full view of all who passed up and down to the house of Darkbrothers. At such an outrage on her privacy and her property, Miss Beaufoy was incensed the last degree, and had gone dow and ordered the instantaneous break ing-up of the encampment. The ch gipsy demurred to this, pleading his i norance of having trespassed at all, i asmuch as the avenue had no gate lodge, and he had consequently mis taken the place for an uninhabited ruin. Miss Beaufoy replied only by reiterating her commands that they should at once evacuate her grounds, under pain of being forcibly expelled by the parish constables, and even re peated her threats close to the sacking and straw on which the sick gipsy lay; to all which the invalid answered not, save with a dull stare from her glassy eyes.

Things were in this position, when, next morning, the lad who brought the letters to the vicarage, conveyed also the intelligence that there was fever of a bad description among the gipseys, and that the village apothecary had declared that the sick woman would die, if not supplied with proper nourishment. Mr. O'Donel was away on pressing business in Scotland, where he had been placing his little boys at 1 school; and Grace, hastily finishing her breakfast, and making up a bas ketful of wine, and bread, and broth, ordered her little carriage, and taking with her a servant, drove down to the wood of Darkbrothers.

The fever was of a malignant nature, yet the young girl had no fear; on the contrary, her courage and energy ever seemed to rise, like a sea-bird on a wave, to meet the opposing diffi. culty.

When she reached Darkbrother

she lighted down from her phaton, and, advancing among the trees, recognised in the sick gipsy the woman who had spoken to her so unkindly in the wood. She was tended by another dark sister of the tribe, to whom Grace spoke, giving her directions how and in what quantities she should administer the wine, &c., for the patient was rapidly sinking; yet, when she once had tasted the nourishment, and revived under its power, and Grace had spoken kind, and cheering, and holy words to her, the dull film passed from her dark eye, and there shot a glance from its black orb of such love and such thankfulness, that Grace felt she was richly repaid, by having been enabled to change an enemy into a friend. She now left them to arrange with her father's agent for the reception of the invalid into the county hospital that evening, and then returned home with a bright check and a happy bosom.

But on the succeeding morning a much greater trial awaited poor Grace. The old housekeeper at Darkbrothers sent up the following note to the vicarage at breakfast-time :

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In half-an-honr after the receipt of this, Grace was entering the great door of Darkbrothers. She met the young village doctor in the hall. He told her that Miss Beaufoy was in high fever, and exhorted her to return home at once, and not face the infection. Grace only gently smiled, and speeded lightly up the stairs to the long corridor, where she was met by the housekeeper, and conducted to the bedside of Miss Beaufoy. She was evidently very ill, and delirious; yet she seemed to know Grace, and took her hand, and kissed it, crying-" Dear young lady."

> Grace at once sat down by the bed

side, and when she saw this, she wept much. She was very weak; sick. ness had broken down the stronghold of pride, and the original tenderness,

VOL. XLVI.-NO. CCLXXVI.

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Before she had finished speaking, Miss Beaufoy had fallen off into an uneasy sleep, yet still retaining Grace's little cool hand in her own hot and wrinkled palm; and when the former essayed gently to detach it, she would wake up, crying—

"Oh! do not leave me; will you not stay with me? I shall go mad, if I have not with me some one as good and true as you."

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And other phrases of this nature, half wild, half sensible. At last, after Grace had spoken to her many gentle and kind words, she left her tranquillised, and passing with noiseless step along the corridor, she descended the staircase, and impelled by a curiosity she did not seek to conquer, crossed the hall, and passed into the cloisters through a heavy and worm-eaten door. They were damp, and dark, and the flagging much broken up. Grace recognised a bar of rusted iron protruding from the wall, on which it was said that Peter Basset, a Discalced Friar, had hung himself in the olden times, after receiving a public reprimand from the Abbot of the Darkbrothers for insubordination. The spirit of the unhappy suicide was said to walk the cloisters on moonlight nights, and many a peasant in Earlsdale could testify to having heard the tramp of his naked feet on the flags, or seen his burly form and large grey head passing swiftly amidst the ruins. Grace saw only there a living apparition, which was the housekeeper's grandnephew, stretched at full length in the long grass, at the base of "The Black Angel," with a number of large bluebottle flies promenading up and down his face, a sight which made the young lady smile as she hastened from the place, pondering much in her mind on the causes of Miss Beaufoy's great change of manner to her, and at all

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events, rejoicing that such was the case. But Miss O'Donel would not have been so much surprised had she known that, even when Miss Beaufoy had found most fault, there was a substratum of approbation in her secret soul, and adniiration that one young, and fair, and gifted, should have learned to live so much for others, and so little for herself. And the original nobility and goodness in the poor lady's heart, which had been almost crushed out by avarice, pride, and the world's disappointments, had in some occasional better moments revived, and she had sympathised, and even glowed with involuntary pleasure, when surveying Grace's character. She had evidently caught the fever during her angry descent on the gipseys' camp; and now, though she had the best physicians the place af forded, yet they could not procure a nursetender. In fact, no one would come to her; the people disliked her; they suspected her poverty, shrunk from her pride, and were fully aware of her closeness in money matters: then they dreaded the house and its bad name; and so, between love of gain, personal dislike, and superstition, neither Mrs. Baines or Grace could procure an attendant who would nurse the sick lady during the night; and the housekeeper, too old and too deaf to undertake the office herself, now wrote off to her daughter at York, who was a professional nursetender, to come to Darkbrothers.

Next morning the bulletin at the vicarage was, that Miss Beaufoy had passed a night of incessant wandering, ever calling for Miss O'Donel, and wondering where she was; and the doctor had said, that unless she were tranquillised the consequences would be most critical. It was then that Grace conceived a plan, which she was enabled to carry out. Had her father been at home, had her mother been alive, it is almost certain they would not have permitted such an act, but she merely consulted the impulse, cr rather the principle, of a most generous, noble, and truly Christian mind; and so she decided to be Miss Beaufoy's sick-nurse herself, till such time as the woman arrived from York, and to take her turn with Mrs. Baines, who remained with her mistress most of the morning and the day.

And so, for six long nights did this good, brave, and unselfish girl watch

by the fevered bed. She had in a pe culiar manner the five requisites which constitute a good nurse, viz., a light foot, a calm heart, a soft hand, a watch: eye, and a cheerful voice; and these she brought to bear in the sick chanber of the solitary lady of Darkuro thers, listening to her incoherent ravings, wiping her clammy lips, smooth. ing her hot pillow, and at every brief interval of returning reason giving ber comfortable words of simple truth and love. Generally, at about five o'clock each morning, Miss Beaufoy fell inte an easy slumber, when Mrs. Buites relieved Grace in her vigils, the latter returning on a little mule-car, which an old groom of her father's drow over for her in the grey of the mort ing; and thus she had three or for good hours of rest before the family met for a late breakfast at the vicar age.

On the third night of her attendance, she had gone into Miss Beanfoy's sitting-room, which adjoined her sleeping apartment. The heat was oppressive, and the loneliness and silence of the old desolate house was heavy on her senses. She advanced to the window and threw it up, and the ingress of the cool air revived her. It was a still night; the moon rode through a soft and mellow blue sky, and rained her silver on the grey ruin, which looked spectral in her white light; below her, to the left, and wreathed in thickest ivy, lay the clois ters, and presently, as she stood at the window, she distinctly heard a sound proceeding from them, as of a heavy foot pacing rapidly along the flags; then a door opened below stairs, somewhere in the old building, and the same footsteps seemed to pass hurriedly and heavily into the hall, and paused at the foot of the staircase, and then died away. A far door clapped, shaking the old house, and all was quiet. Grace's heart beat violently for a few minutes, for the imaginative faculty was strong in her; but after a short time she recovered her compe sure, and the same calm fearlessness which she ever exercised came to her help, and carefully locking the doors of both the sleeping and the sitting apartment, she went lightly back to her post, just as Miss Beaufoy was waking up. In two hours the day began to break, and Mrs. Baines came to relieve her. Grace mentioned what

she had heard, but the old lady, who was matter-of-fact to the last degree, was incredulous, and shook her head, exclaiming

"Dear Miss, you were dreaming; it was only the rustling of the ivy. I have often been told of odd noises at Darkbrothers, but I am deaf, and never heard them."

Next night Grace determined to engage the old groom to sit up below stairs during her watch; but the man, though greatly attached to her, grew perfectly pale at the bare idea. He had ventured his neck and life a thousand times over hedge, and stake, and wall, when he rode to the Earlsdale staghounds as whipper-in; and old as he was, he would have fought five men together, to pleasure or help his young mistress; but to pass a night at Darkbrothers by himself, in the neighbourhood of those fearful cloisters, where the friar walks at moonlight-"that's for sartain," said poor John-the man shrunk from the proposal with such absolute horror and dismay, that Grace, half vexed and half amused, forbore to press the matter further. All was, however, quite tranquil that night and the following one; the doctor also expressed his hopes that a favourable crisis was at hand, and that Miss Beaufoy's recovery was now a certain thing. The sixth night set in, and found the fair young nurse at her post, looking as bright and as fresh as if she had encountered no fatigue at all. She had enjoyed a long sleep that morning, and had afterwards taken a brisk ride on a favourite mare over the heathy downs which rose above Brockholes Park; and so she felt strong and full of hope because her patient's pulse and skin had been pronounced better, and her mind was beginning to settle; and she had been now from 8 o'clock in the most profound yet quiet slumber. Late in her watch a slight slumber had overcome Grace, when the great church clock striking two awoke her. Immediately afterwards she was aware that some person had passed up the corridor; there was no mistaking the tread of a man's foot. She listened with intense earnestness, till the sound had died away in the direction of the "Dark Wing," and then the idea of rushing across the corridor and awaking the housekeeper seized her, when again she heard the noise returning, and presently the heavy tread as of a

naked foot, steadily and distinctly passed along the gallery towards the stairs. Fear mastered her for a moment; in the next the intrepid heart of the young girl resumed its accustomed beat, and commending herself to God, she deliberately opened her door, and went out on the corridor. Something was passing down the staircase, and, instigated by a feeling she was never able afterwards to explain, she followed on. She had scarcely attained the first landing-place, when the same sounds she had heard on a previous night proceeded from the cloisters; it was like the tramp of rushing feet. The staircase was in total darkness-black with shadow but the hall was bathed in bright moonlight from the window over the door, and along its floor Grace now plainly discerned a figure slowly stalking. The appearance was loosely garmented in white; its feet were bare, and a cloth or a cowl hung over its left shoulder. It had now reached the far end of the hall; a dark moving tide of something appeared to follow, and to keep rushing about its feet; when, with a wild gibber, it flung its cowl down on the ground, and, with a laugh and a spring, vanished through a side-door, slamming it as it went. As the figure turned round, the moonbeams struck full on its face, and Grace returned swiftly to her chamber, satisfied that she had not seen the restless ghost of Friar Basset, and sat down composedly to her watch -yes, her last and most happy watch, because crowned with success. For at about five in the morning, when the room was all dyed in the first pink of coming day, Miss Beaufoy awoke, quite herself-most feeble, but entirely free from fever.

"Oh my God!" she softly said, "is this Miss O'Donel? Oh, kind young lady, how much I owe you let these tears testify."

She spoke sobbing; but Grace soothed her with her low, soft voice; told her how happy she had been to nurse her, and then poured forth such a sweet and simple thanksgiving to their heavenly Father as was inexpressibly soothing to the old lady, whose heart was now softened with gratitude, and with joy for her safety; and the old housekeeper coming in, partook of their happiness, and increased it by sharing it.

The mule-car did not arrive till se

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