s not a mistake somewhere, or
that at least some one would be sorry or say something or run to pick him
up.

But, fortunately, he did not need help, and the priests returned--the
younger one with the tears running down his face--and donned their
vestments and read a brief requiem for his soul, while the squad stood
uncovered, and the men in hollow square shook their accoutrements into
place, and shifted their pieces and got ready for the order to march, and
the band began again with the same quickstep which the fusillade had
interrupted.

The figure still lay on the grass untouched, and no one seemed to
remember that it had walked there of itself, or noticed that the
cigarette still burned, a tiny ring of living fire, at the place where
the figure had first stood.

The figure was a thing of the past, and the squad shook itself like a
great snake, and then broke into little pieces and started off jauntily,
stumbling in the high grass and striving to keep step to the music.

The officers led it past the figure in the linen suit, and so close to it
that the file closers had to part with the column to avoid treading on
it. Each soldier as he passed turned and looked down on it, some craning
their necks curiously, others giving a careless glance, and some without
any interest at all, as they would have looked at a house by the
roadside, or a hole in the road.

One young soldier caught his foot in a trailing vine, just opposite to
it, and fell. He grew very red when his comrades giggled at him for his
awkwardness. The crowd of sleepy spectators fell in on either side of
the band. They, too, had forgotten it, and the priests put their
vestments back in the bag and wrapped their heavy cloaks about them, and
hurried off after the others.

Every one seemed to have forgotten it except two men, who came slowly
towards it from the town, driving a bullock-cart that bore an unplaned
coffin, each with a cigarette between his lips, and with his throat
wrapped in a shawl to keep out the morning mists.

At that moment the sun, which had shown some promise of its coming in the
glow above the hills, shot up suddenly from behind them in all the
splendor of the tropics, a fierce, red disk of heat, and filled the air
with warmth and light.

The bayonets of the retreating column flashed in it, and at the sight a
rooster in a farm-yard near by crowed vigorously, and a dozen bugles
answered the challenge with the brisk, cheery notes