In after years the next four days appeared to Marrion as a blank. She went on with her work, she shed no tears except when she was asleep. She did not even think. In the late evenings, when work was over, she would ride or drive to where the Highlanders' camp had stood and sit silent for an hour or two on the cairn about Marmaduke's grave, doing nothing. She brought no flowers, the sight of his grave gave her no more poignant grief. Indeed, often as she looked out eastwards over the sea, with all the glorious trending of sunlit, sun-shadowed hills and dales towards it, she would feel calmly that he would have admired it as much as she did.

Yet underneath all her calm lurked a regret that grew with the days.

He had been left behind, and he had been so eager to go. Even those last words of his--"I have done it"--were poor comfort.

So, confusedly, out of this regret and the memory of those other words of his--"I have found you, or rather I have found myself, for ever and ever and ever"--arose the idea of getting to the Crimea herself, if she could. She could at least follow the fortunes of the regiment of which he had been so fond, so proud. Besides, home had no call for her. She had no ties there and the prospect of a long life without them was appalling. Far better to die out here as he had died. But the interest of Varna had passed. The tragedy of the fire had ousted the tragedy of disease and starvation. The cholera had ceased, the city was almost depopulated, so the problem of many mouths and no food had disappeared.

Once the idea of following the regiment presented itself to her it became an obsession. She made up her mind that if it could be compassed she would do what she could for its brave men; then if death did not intervene--which she hoped it might--she could come back to where Duke lay and tell him she had carried him in her heart all the way. So she set to work to think out the means. Her shaven and shorn head--as he had called it--might facilitate matters; for she might pose as a youth of one of the many uncouth peoples gathered round by greed of gain. Varna was a polyglot place, and she knew enough Turkish now to render English unnecessary.

While still nebulous, however, her plans were suddenly settled for her by the arrival in port of the very Turkish mail steamer in which she had sailed from Marseilles. The little doctor naturally enough called on his protÉgÉe, full of the fine reports he had heard of her from old Achmet. The ship had been requisitioned and he was on his way to Eupatoria with medical stores for the Turkish contingent, which expected to land there. The opportunity seemed too good to be lost. She begged him to arrange for her to go so far, pointing out that she had proved her capacity for usefulness. After a few demurs he consented. She left everything standing in Varna and three days afterwards found herself surveying the beach at Kalamita Bay, a few miles south of Eupatoria, which had been taken the night before by the expedition without the exchange of a shot. It was a shingly beach or bar but a few feet wide, behind which lay a long, narrow, sedge-set lake of salt water. From this rose, with deafening clamour, thousands upon thousands of wild fowl alarmed by the unaccustomed presence of man, their wailing cries almost drowning the long surge of the sea upon the shingly beach and the oaths and confusion inseparable from the disembarkation of so many troops. Beyond this salt lake rose a high bank of red clay serrated by many small ravines, while over this again the wide plain, dotted with cattle, corn-ricks, and farmhouses, showed a land where supplies should be plentiful. In the far distance could be seen, dimly blue, the hills behind Sebastopol, which lay some seven and twenty miles to the south. In deference to the little doctor's recommendation she remained on board and was thus free to watch the humour and difficulties of the disembarkation. Both were numerous. The heavy surf made the passage of boats to the shore dangerous, but the blue-jackets were over the sides almost before they could foot bottom, and, aided by those landed before--who, naked as the day they were born, rushed into the sea to help--generally succeeded in beaching their cargo high and dry. To little purpose, so far as the men were concerned, since it was "off uniform" in a second, and into the water to help the next arrivals. Luckily the day was sultry and warm. The landing of the cavalry horses presented the greatest difficulty, for even after confinement on shipboard the dry shingle was not sufficient bait to induce them to walk the plank alone; so that they had to be ridden, and as three out of six went souse into the sea it was provocative of much merriment--for even in those days the British soldier was light-hearted. The men, therefore, wrung their wet clothes out cheerfully, and the horses dried themselves by rolling in the patches of sun-baked sand, for the day was glorious. Yet the discomfort was hard, the work harder; but, despite it all, Thomas Atkins found time to nickname the Crim-Tartar population who came down, curious but friendly, to view the scene, by the strangely inappropriate and colourless appellation of "Joey," one which nevertheless stuck firm all through the Crimean War.

So the day passed; but the afternoon promised a storm, and Marrion was anxious to get on shore and make arrangements, if she could, for stopping there. As she was watching she saw a gig going ashore to the Old Fort with a woman in it--a woman who was received with plaudits by the whole army. At the time she could not conceive who it could be, though she afterwards found out it was the Countess of Erroll. The incident, however, gave her courage; she persuaded the little doctor to allow her to land, and, accompanied by him and in her Turkish dress, she found a night's lodging in one of the nearest farm-houses. Nor had she to pay for it overmuch, for the Crim-Tartarians were kindly, honest folk ready to welcome brothers and sisters of Islam. Indeed, they looked upon the new-comers as a possible deliverance from Russian rule. It was lucky this was so, thought Marrion, as with the sinking of day a violent storm of wind and rain swept the beach, drenching the fifty thousand men who were without tents. They dug holes for themselves in the shingle, spread their greatcoats atop, and joked away discomfort even though death stalked among them and the terrible scourge, cholera, they hoped they had left behind them, claimed not a few victims before morning.

They were cheerful as ever, nevertheless, next day while the work of disembarkation went on. Marrion watched it from afar, finding a Varna friend or two in the Turkish contingent, but sheering off from the regiment for fear of recognition--especially by Andrew Fraser. She was not ready for that yet. So three days passed and it was not till the nineteenth that the army of some fifty thousand men moved on towards Sebastopol. About a third of the way thither the enemy was said to be strongly entrenched on the banks of the Alma river. Why he had not attacked during the confusion of disembarkation was a subject of much comment, and all agreed it must be because the position they held on the river was supposed to be impregnable. Why, therefore, leave it?

"We shall see," said Lord Raglan succinctly.

He was an old man, as indeed were almost all the leaders in the Crimean War, but he was full of the fire of youth.

The march was a gay one despite the fact that it was over stony barren steppes; but the hares that started up so often seemed made to be chivied, when, confused, they got between the men's legs, and many a warrior strung one secretly under his knapsack against a savoury supper. And songs were sung, the "Tipperary" of the time, and jokes made with "Joey" who, all along the line, came out affably, ready to trade.

But the sight of the red Alma cliffs that had to be stormed on the morrow sobered some, and Marrion, from another farmhouse where she had obtained shelter, watched the evening sun redden them still more, and thought of the blood that would be shed on them tomorrow with sick loathing.

It was grey dawn when she rose, slipped on a youth's dress she had brought with her, and, packing a few necessaries in a small bundle, waited for the rÉveillÉ. But none came. On that fateful morning of the 20th September, 1854, the whole force of twenty thousand British bayonets and sabres assembled in silence. For a watchful enemy awaited them beyond the sluggish tortuous river that wound its way to the sea amid sparse vineyards. Far away to the right the horizon of open sea showed a massing of grey hulks and twinkling lights. That was the Fleet ready to aid as it could. Further afield, beyond the debouching of the cliffs, seven thousand Turkish troops prevented a flank attack. Then came the French twenty thousand face to face with the most formidable part of the cliff nearest the sea. After that the British. Marrion, through her spy-glass, could see the Highlanders standing, their faces set and determined. This was to be their first brush with the enemy, and many of them had waited for it so long. Eight months since Duke had brought her news of battle in the little London house! And now he lay in his solitary grave while his men fought.

Still silence. It was past nine o'clock now, and the troops stood motionless as if on parade. Here and there, in low scrub on the opposite bank, an enemy's battery showed, ready no doubt for instant action on the firing of the first shot. And, every now and then, bayonet-points and the heads of men seen for a second or two against the sky-line, told of infantry ready to receive attack. But there were no skirmishers, no attempt to force on strife.

"No possible advance there," said the Chief of the Staff at the war council that was being held in the open, as he pointed on the map to the cliffs facing the sea. "I wish there were, for, so far as I can see, Menschikoff has left it unguarded."

A Colonel of the Zouaves looked critically at the contours, then turned to the Marquis St. Arnaud--

"My children are good climbers, sir; may we not try?"

"They shall," replied the French Commander-in-Chief. So the attack was ordered. On the extreme right, the French were to throw out skirmishers, tackle the cliff, charge over the first narrow plateau, and so, up the next bank, reach the plain above. Then, when the attack in flank had really commenced, the British would deliver a frontal one.

As he rode back to his own lines the Marquis St. Arnaud paused to take the British salute with the words, "I hope you will fight well to-day." To which came rapid reply in a voice from the 56th Regiment--"Don't you know we will?"

Whereat in long rolling reverberations from company to company, from battalion to battalion, rose a deafening cheer. It was the first sound of the battle of the Alma.

And hark! A disconnected rattle of rifle shots! The skirmishers are out among the rocks; and now, like goats up invisible paths, their full red pantaloons redder than the red clay, the Zouaves show in single file--here, there, everywhere like streamlets of blood. Incredible pluck! Astounding agility! But they are up. The first vantage ground is gained; they pause to collect the skirmishers and sound the pas de charge--that muffled pulse beat that, throbbing destruction, grows louder and louder and louder, drowning all but sheer lust of blood.

On they go, only to receive the fire from a Russian battery posted above.

So the advance goes on, but it goes slower. That salvo on the Zouaves opened the ball, and now, trundling among the ranks of the British, come round shot and shrapnel, dealing death and disablement.

The pas de charge continues, but it is perforce slow. "Pass the order to lie down," says Lord Raglan; and, obedient, though straining at the leash, the British troops lie down while the enemy's shot fall among them still dealing death and disablement at every round.

"How goes the French attack?" he queries hastily, as an aide-de-camp dashes up at 1.50 p.m.

"They are across and up, sir, but not sufficiently established to warrant our starting."

Lord Raglan fumes. His blood was up, his men were being shot at without reply.

"Give the order for general advance," he said, staking all, rashly enough, on the hazard of brave troops; but if he staked rashly he staked wisely. The serried masses of men rose with ringing cheers, dashing on through a belt of fire from the opposite heights, floundered somehow through the river, and paused for a second to take breath in the vineyards below the steeps. But formation had been lost. It was sheer onslaught. At the head of the advance rode Lord Raglan himself, regardless of the gaps in his Staff. Sir George Brown, leading the Light Division, goes down in a cloud of dust before a Russian battery. "Go on, 23rd," he shouts; "I'm all right, but be sure I'll remember this day, boys!"

Further to the left Colin Campbell in front of the Highlanders calls back to them: "Keep yere fingers frae the triggers, men, till ye're within a yaird o' them." And they did. Colin Campbell's horse is down under him, but he is up again charging a battery on foot and calling to the Guards who came up in support, "We want nane but Hie'land bonnets here." But the Guards were firm. Steady, in even line, without a waver in the black bearskins, they came on resistless, making one man in the Light Division mutter under his breath, "D---- them, wasting time in dressing up as if they were on a parade ground!" For all that they had stormed the right end of the most powerful battery almost before the Highlanders had got in on the left. A few minutes later the 1st and 2nd divisions crowned the crest. The French, finding their objective, turned their own guns upon the flying enemy. There were a few faint struggles by the infantry, a few more rounds of artillery, and the Russians were in full flight, leaving over four thousand dead and wounded on the battlefield. So Alma's heights were won, but at a cost which saddened the victory; for out of a total of fourteen thousand British troops employed, one thousand four hundred, or one in ten, were dead or wounded. The French had suffered as much, so General Canrobert's face was grave as he rode up at the close of the day to exclaim: "I ask of Fortune but this! May I command an English corps for three short weeks, then could I die happy." And the English commander's voice was graver still as he replied: "I could not command a French corps. They would outpace me." And in truth the Zouaves' rapid, flame-like spread from crag to crag, their ceaseless fusillade meanwhile, had been all-astonishing and had paralysed the foe completely. But now the laurel wreath of victory was fading, the cypress garland of death was taking its place. It had been a three hours' hand to hand infantry battle, and the late September sun was sinking when the living turned to look after their fallen comrades, for in those days ambulance corps were in their infancy and Red Cross was not. The wounded soldier lay as he fell, dying, mayhap for want of care, even for a drink of water. There were hundreds such upon the heights they had won, as Marrion Paul, taking advantage of the fast coming darkness, began her round. She was provided with water, brandy, a few simple ligaments and bandages. At Varna she had had not a few wounded Turkish soldiers from the Danube in old Achmet's hospital; but this was different. There the wounds seemed a disease; here you felt the keen horror of cold steel and rifle bullet close at hand; you realised the futility, the wickedness of it. She avoided the salients where the dead and wounded lay thickest, for there help was already being given, and men were going to and fro with stretchers; but in one or two of the little gullies she found someone to tend until, darkness closing, she became more brave, and lighting the little lamp with which she had provided herself, she ventured more into the open. Here it was pitiful; the dead lay in clusters, their faces as a rule upturned to the stars. The stretcher-bearers had come and gone, leaving behind those to whom they were useless--as yet. She knelt beside one dead man and wiped away a blood stain from his forehead. He had been orderly once to Duke. Poor soul! Some woman would doubtless wish she had been in her, Marrion's, place. And now the whole hillside was lit up by wandering lights, the lights of men searching for their bosom friends, for their officers. But there were other lights, too, though she did not think of them as different--the lights of the pilferers, the carrion crows, who crept about to rifle dead men's pockets. There were more of them here on the level where the dead and wounded Russians lay in heaps; some, supported by the bodies of others, remained still in the attitude of firing, their rifles still in their hands, their faces curiously peaceful. Well, they had died doing their duty.

A faint call came from a man who lay, his head half-resting on the breast of a dead comrade. She turned to him at once, throwing her lamp-light on his face. Extraordinarily good-looking, so young, so near death. She saw these things at a glance, guessing he was shot through the lungs as his breath came in soft pitiful gasps. She knelt to offer him a drink, but he shook his head. Evidently his eyes were already dim, for he whispered in broken English: "Good--gentlemens--take--take--my heart." She leaned closer to catch his words, thinking bitterly as she did so that he took her for his enemy--his enemy--while her whole heart was going out in pity for such as he.

"I don't understand," she said tenderly. "Your heart--what do you mean?"

"My heart," he gasped painfully--"here!" And his limp arm, lying helplessly beside him, crooked itself in supreme effort, and the hand fell on his breast.

A sudden comprehension came to her.

"You want me to take something from your heart?"

His dim eyes smiled faintly.

"Yes--good gentlemens," he whispered; it was almost a sigh, but it held content. "Take--give!"

She understood now, though a faint shiver through the young body told her that the speaking soul had gone. Here again was Love transcending Death! Quietly she laid down the head she had been supporting, closed the eyes, and opening the grey tunic began her search, her mind rapt away from her surroundings by thoughts of Duke. Her hand had just found a thin chain, when a rough clutch was laid on her shoulder and she was wrenched to her feet with such force that the chain giving way left her standing with something hanging from her hand.

"Caught in the act!" said a rough voice. "Shoot the young devil, sergeant!"

Something cold touched her forehead. Her heart gave a great bound. Was this death--oh, Duke--Duke!

The flash of a bull's-eye lantern turned full on her showed her face deadly pale but firm.

"Hold hard!" cried another voice hastily. "The fellow carries a water-bottle--of our pattern, too! Give the devil his due, Mac."

She could see faintly now. They were Highlanders; a search party evidently, and the blood rushed back to heart and face.

"I'm doing no harm!" she cried hotly. "He asked me--to take and give--his heart."

At her first word the cold nozzle of the revolver had left her forehead.

"By God!" came in a murmur; but for the most part the little group of men were startled out of speech and stood staring at the figure before them, holding out in apology what it held.

It was only a pinchbeck locket with a woman's face in it--a pinchbeck locket in the form of a heart.

"What the devil are you doing here in that kit, you young oaf?" said an angry voice at last. "I as nearly shot you as a carrion crow as ever----" It paused; something in the situation seemed to bring silence. The stars overhead, the dead lover at their feet, the tall, slim mysterious figure holding out the symbol of something that had survived death.

"You had better go on, Mac," said the voice that had advised caution, finally breaking the stillness. "I will use this young fool's lantern and that will make two search parties. We have little time to spare. I'll see him safe. You'd better take the orderlies with you. They have appliances and will know what to do. I can manage."

"As you please, doctor," came the reply.

When they had gone the man they had called doctor took up Marrion's lantern and seemed to examine its light, turning it finally full on his face; and suddenly he spoke.

"Mrs. Marsden----" Marrion could not avoid a start.

"Mrs. Marsden!" she echoed faintly.

"Yes. You don't recognise me evidently. Indeed, I doubt if you ever saw me, but I was with poor Muir when he died. Andrew Fraser had to tell me--something--before I would let you come, and your face and hair aren't easily forgotten. I guess why you are here; but it isn't safe--in fact, it's impossible; but if you will go back now and come to my hospital--Dr. Forsyth--in English dress, please--I think I can settle you to work--something that will prevent your being taken for a Crim-Tartar thief," he added grimly. "It's lucky I have a good memory for faces."

"I don't think I should have cared," said Marrion, but he took no notice of her defiance.

"As for this poor chap," he knelt down beside the Russian and laid his hand over the heart. "Dead as a door nail, ceased to beat--wonder where he wanted to send it. Is there a name at the back?"

Marrion bent to the light.

"A name and an address."

The doctor jumped up lightly.

"Being dead he yet speaketh," he remarked cheerfully. "Now if you will please go back I will go on. We have to find poor Grant; he was last seen on the crest leading his men, with Andrew Fraser--the colonel's servant, you remember--just behind him."

"Andrew!" exclaimed Marrion, with a sort of sob. "Is he killed, too?"

"Killed or missing," called Dr. Forsyth, as he turned away to rejoin his party.