Page:Memorials of Capt. Hedley Vicars, Ninety-seventh Regiment by Marsh, Catherine, 1818-1912.djvu/103

94 of peace given him through those Testaments? — There is yet nothing known positively about the movements of my regiment, but it is said that we are soon to move to the Tower prior to our departure for the seat of war. I was much cheered the day before yesterday by a conversation which I had with two soldiers of the 97th, who began to follow the Lord Jesus about the same time as I did; they are both, thank God, walking in his ways, and, like good soldiers of Christ, are fighting the Lord's battles against all his lees. I trust, dear friend, that when I return (if I ever do return), I may have an opportunity of paying you a visit. I am sure nothing would give me greater pleasure. Remember me most kindly to your husband, and believe me ever

One day when we were in London, I happened to meet him when on my way to a hospital to see a sick navvy, whom I had known in Beckenham. He requested permission to go also. I hesitated, on finding that there were fever cases in the ward for which I was bound: he was amused at my fears for him, saying, that in old times he had spent many hours of the day by the side of yellow fever patients, at their quarters in the West Indies, reading novels to them; "So now you need not fear for me if I read the Bible to your mild fever cases in England!"

From that time he regularly visited that poor man twice a-week, although the hospital was six miles distant from Kensington Barracks; and even in the hurry of his last day in England, found time to bid him farewell.

During each of his succeeding visits to Beckenham, he addressed the poor in one cottage or another, in different parts of the village. At a carpenter's cottage, in an adjoining hamlet, where he spoke with