oor devil. I had no ill-will
left for him, though coming down that hill I was rather hoping that the
two of us might have a final scrap. He was a brute and a bully, but,
by God! he was a man. I heard his great roar when he saw the tumult,
and the next I saw was his monstrous figure working at the gun. He
swung it south and turned it on the fugitives.

But he never fired it. The press was on him, and the gun was swept
sideways. He stood up, a foot higher than any of them, and he seemed
to be trying to check the rush with his pistol. There is power in
numbers, even though every unit is broken and fleeing. For a second to
that wild crowd Stumm was the enemy, and they had strength enough to
crush him. The wave flowed round and then across him. I saw the
butt-ends of rifles crash on his head and shoulders, and the next
second the stream had passed over his body.

That was God's judgement on the man who had set himself above his kind.

Sandy gripped my shoulder and was shouting in my ear:

'They're coming, Dick. Look at the grey devils ... Oh, God be
thanked, it's our friends!'

The next minute we were tumbling down the hillside, Blenkiron hopping
on one leg between us. I heard dimly Sandy crying, 'Oh, well done our
side!' and Blenkiron declaiming about Harper's Ferry, but I had no
voice at all and no wish to shout. I know the tears were in my eyes,
and that if I had been left alone I would have sat down and cried with
pure thankfulness. For sweeping down the glen came a cloud of grey
cavalry on little wiry horses, a cloud which stayed not for the rear of
the fugitives, but swept on like a flight of rainbows, with the steel
of their lance-heads glittering in the winter sun. They were riding
for Erzerum.

Remember that for three months we had been with the enemy and had never
seen the face of an Ally in arms. We had been cut off from the
fellowship of a great cause, like a fort surrounded by an army. And
now we were delivered, and there fell around us the warm joy of
comradeship as well as the exultation of victory.

We flung caution to the winds, and went stark mad. Sandy, still in his
emerald coat and turban, was scrambling up the farther slope of the
hollow, yelling greetings in every language known to man. The leader
saw him, with a word checked his men for a moment--it was marvellous to
see the horses reined in in such a break-neck ride--and from the
squadron half a dozen troopers swung loose and