Page:Memorials of Capt. Hedley Vicars, Ninety-seventh Regiment by Marsh, Catherine, 1818-1912.djvu/224

214 "Oh! how many happy little schemes of mine does this at once put an end to. I had fondly hoped that we should live to go home, and that I might bring my dear departed friend to you, and proudly show him as a specimen of what a model soldier should be. But God's ways are not our ways. He spared him from the horrible death of suffocation by charcoal, for a few months, that he might die a soldier's death.

"Noble fellow; he rushed in front of his men; and his powerful arm made more than one Russian fall, before that cruel bullet brought him down. It must have been fired close to him, for his coat was singed. I never knew how much I loved him until he was so nearly dying of the charcoal. When I heard at day-light this morning, that Vicars had been brought home dead, you may imagine my excessive grief. I loved that man as dearly as a brother; and it seems that I almost hear his voice sounding in my ears, as he read (two days ago) the service — when some of us met on the day of humiliation,

"There was a little locket which he always wore round his neck; and I remember, when we heard we were to come here, he said, 'we should all be prepared to give directions what we wished done in case we got killed; for instance, I have got a little book of Psalms, and a locket, which I would wish sent home, in case I die!' Poor fellow! I remember this; and as I took the locket (a small gold one which opens like a watch, and has a small picture) — sprinkled with his life-blood — I cried so that I thought I would get ill.

" Oh! his poor mother and sisters, that he loved so dearly. But she is a Christian: and has lived to see her once wild and reel, less son come to the fold of Jesus, and prove his sincerity by a long, and unswerving, and consistent course. I also cut a lock of his fine, curly hair this morning, as I knew his mother would like to get it If I was to try to write all the good that my beloved friend did, I should not have room. How he fearlessly, visited and spoke to the men in the worst times of the cholera; but, as he told me, he got his reward — for the soldiers' dying lips besought blessings on his head. Oh, how happy he is now! Such a death, and such glory