is rather poor. I don't carry my diary
with me."

"Don't you think it would be better if you could confine yourself to the
exact truth?" added Somers, who really felt a deep interest in his
associate.

"I think it very likely it would; but things get a little mixed up in my
mind. My memory is poor on details. Just after the battle of Magenta,
while I was lying wounded on the ground, one of the emperor's staff rode
up to me, and asked how many cannon my regiment had captured. To save my
life, I couldn't tell whether it was two hundred or three hundred. My
memory is very treacherous on details."

"I believe you are hopeless, captain," laughed Somers.

"Hopeless?"

"Why, you have told the biggest story that has passed your lips to-day."

"What, about the cannon?"

"Two hundred or three hundred! Why, your regiment captured all the guns
the Austrians had!"

"Didn't I tell you I couldn't remember whether it was two hundred or
three hundred? You are the most critical young man I ever met in the
whole course of my life!"

"But two hundred would be an abominable exaggeration. Perhaps you meant
muskets?"

"No; cannon."

"But, my dear captain, just consider for one moment. Of course the
batteries were supported?"

"To be sure they were."

"Six guns to a battery would have made fifty batteries; and----"

"Oh, confound your statistics!" exclaimed the captain impatiently.

"But statistics enable us to see the truth. Now, captain, at the battle
of Bunker Hill, I saw a man----"

"You?" demanded Captain de Banyan.

"I said so."

"Were you at the battle of Bunker Hill?"

"Didn't you see me there?"

"Come, come, Somers; you shouldn't trifle with the truth. I was not at
the battle you speak of."

"But I was----"

"You! You were not born till sixty years after the battle of Bunker
Hill."

"But I was--only illustrating your case."

"Here comes an orderly with something from headquarters," said Captain de
Banyan, apparently as much rejoiced to change the conversation as the
reader will be to have it changed.

The orderly proceeded to the position occupied by the field and staff
officers of the regiment; and, a few moments later, came an order for
Lieutenant Somers, with twenty of his men, selected for special duty, to
report at the division headquarters.

"You are in luck, Somers; you will have a glorious opportunity to
distinguish yourself," said Captain de Banyan, whose second lieutenant
was ordered to