GRAHAM MCCALL'S VICTORY.

CHAPTER I.

ONE OF THE FEW WHO WERE KILLED.

DREARY, marshy spot, a few miles from Lochgarry. The time, night; and a man stretched on the chill, damp ground, dying of his wounds. The year-1653.

A few hours ago an engagement had been fought on the banks of the loch, between a detachment of Cromwell's army under Generals Monk and Morgan on the one side, and Middleton and Glencairn, fighting for the exile son of the beheaded King, on the other. And the Protector's forces gained the day.

"General Morgan pressed so hard that the King's army ran as fast as they could, and in great confusion. But there was no great slaughter, as night came on soon after they were engaged."

The historian gives us that small off-hand bit of

information as to there being no great slaughter.

Of course he could not stop to make a moan over the dozen or so men who happened to be of those few who had been slain. The widows and orphans must do that in the desolated homes, where things were no less sad because they happened to be the only ones picked out to endure this bitter misery.

However, at that midnight hour none of the bereaved had as yet had time to learn of the encounter that had taken place, much less to glean any of the attendant particulars. Graham McCall lay dying out on that marshy moor, and his sweet-voiced, gentle young wife, Kate, lay sleeping peacefully with their little child, Ivie, in her arms; never even in her dreams imagining what was befalling her husband, nor that the place she had been fain to fill beside him, at that solemn hour, was occupied by a rough soldier, not even a fellow-countryman.

Graham McCall had joined Lord Glencairn's standard because he was earnest to fulfil what he regarded as his bounden religious duty, to fight for his covenanted King. But the army of Charles was composed of very diverse elements. A considerable number of the Scotchmen in it were actuated simply by loyalty to the grandson of their King, James the Sixth; some by dislike to Cromwell; others again were there from the noble and unselfish motives that influenced McCall; and the men who had recently come over from the Continent under Middleton, himself a soldier of fortune from the Thirty Years' War, were for the

most part Englishmen fighting for English Royalty, and for the gaiety, liberality, and brilliancy that they promised themselves should be attendant on a future English Court.

The two companion fugitives from the luckless affray at Lochgarry were representatives of the extremes in the Royalist army, Graham McCall, with his strong religious convictions, and the blameless life with which he adorned his profession as a follower of his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The other, a young cousin of Middleton's, scarcely more than a boy, but a very giant for size and strength, and already, unhappily, as much given to drinking and swearing as any of his comrades on his side of the

camp.

He thought to prove his manliness and good comradeship by his aptness as a pupil in these sins, but he would have been a really fine fellow, and one of those marked out to leave a famous name behind him, if he had not thus cruelly blighted his own life. An expression of the most true and honest sympathy rested on his countenance now as he bent low over the dying laird, trying to discover by the moon's misty light whether he were still conscious.

"Savile?" came the low breathing of his own name by way of answer to the scrutiny.

"Mais oui donc," was the reply in a quick tone of relief. And then, with as quick correction of himself: "Your pardon. I have been so long over yonder jabbering French that I have well-nigh lost the

proper aptitude of my own tongue, it seems. You are feeling better, I trust? You will yet pull through, I hope, and be soon nursed back to strength by that wife and youngster Ivie you are so fond of speaking of."

A momentary gleam of returning brightness came into the large, dim blue eyes, as accompaniment to the words: "Nay, my friend, I am dying. I am going to the everlasting home, where One awaits me who is even dearer than my dear wife and child."

The failing of the voice, and increased pallor, told the young soldier all too plainly that his passing hope was indeed a vain one, but, with the instinctive craving to prolong life, he pulled a most fantasticlooking but beautiful glass flask from his pocket, and taking out the engraved and twisted stopper he put it to the chill white lips, whilst a subtle fragrance filled the whole air around.

The contents certainly appeared to possess some potent charm, for the mouth of the flask had scarcely touched the dying man's lips before he revived wonderfully, and his appearance might have deceived even those far more experienced than Henry Savile into hopes for his recovery. But it did not deceive

himself.

"Hope for this world is over for me," he said tranquilly," and I am content to die. My present rally I believe is due as much to that wonderful aroma as to what I have tasted; the scent seems to penetrate me as it has done the air."

The young officer smiled with a touch of pride in his possession, as he lifted it high for its sheeny hues to catch the pale light of the moonbeams. "I have travelled somewhat," he said. "This was given to me by a strange old sage last year, in Florence. I gave him a pull out of the midst of a rabble mob one day, and in return he bestowed this boon on me, saying that it was of a potency almost to bring the dead to life again."

Graham McCall closed his eyes for a moment, and then, half-raising his feeble right hand, he repeated with an impressive slowness:

"Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.' That is the Christian's cordial, my friend, and it hath in it this of unspeakable and precious gloriousness, that it is bestowed upon us with no assurance of being 'almost' a gift to bring us life, but a certainty: 'He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.' Not 'perhaps,' not 'almost '-he 'shall.'"

The young giant shrugged his broad shoulders with something of the foreign air he had acquired in foreign parts. His customary off-hand recklessness was returning now that the immediate cause for anxiety was fading at any rate from his superficial view.

"It passes me to understand," he said, in a tone of mingled pity and contempt; "it utterly passes me to understand how you can keep to this child's faith of