ly. "He was, already."

By the scarlet headgear, and a white symbol on the back of his jacket,
the man at their feet was one of the musketeers. He had left the
firing-line, crawled away in the dark, and found a quiet spot to die in.

"So! This is good luck!" Wutzler doffed his coolie hat, slid out of his
jacket, tossed both down among the oil-jars, and stooping over the dead
man, began to untwist the scarlet turban. In the dim light his lean arms
and frail body, coated with black hair, gave him the look of a puny ape
robbing a sleeper. He wriggled into the dead man's jacket, wound the
blood-red cloth about his own temples, and caught up musket, ramrod,
powder-horn, and bag of bullets.--"Now I am all safe," he chuckled. "Now
I can go anywhere, to-night."

He shouldered arms and stood grinning as though all their troubles were
ended.

"So! I am rebel soldier. We try again; come.--Not too close behind me;
and if I speak, run back."

In this order they began once more to scout through the smoke. No one
met them, though distant shapes rushed athwart the gloom, yelping to
each other, and near by, legs of runners moved under a rolling cloud of
smoke as if their bodies were embedded and swept along in the
wrack:--all confused, hurried, and meaningless, like the uproar of
gongs, horns, conches, whistling bullets, crackers, and squibs that
sputtering, string upon string, flower upon rising flower of misty red
gold explosion, ripped all other noise to tatters.

Where and how he followed, Rudolph never could have told; but once, as
they ran slinking through the heaviest smoke and, as it seemed, the
heart of the turmoil, he recognized the yawning rim of a clay-pit, not a
stone's throw from his own gate. It was amazing to feel that safety lay
so close; still more amazing to catch a glimpse of many coolies digging
in the pit by torchlight, peacefully, as though they had heard of no
disturbance that evening. Hardly had the picture flashed past, than he
wondered whether he had seen or imagined it, whose men they were, and
why, even at any time, they should swarm so busy, thick as ants, merely
to dig clay.

He had worry enough, however, to keep in view the white cross-barred
hieroglyphic on his guide's jacket. Suddenly it vanished, and next
instant the muzzle of the gun jolted against his ribs.

"Run, quick," panted Wutzler, pushing him aside. "To the left, into the
go-down. Here they are!--To your left!" And with the words, he