"Now here's this one of whom we are talking, Ercildoune, born with a
silver spoon in his mouth: instead of eating with it, in peace and
elegance, in some European home, look at him here. You said something
about his lack of self-sacrifice. He's doing 'what he is from a
principle; and beyond that, it's no wonder the men care for him: he has
spent a small fortune on the most needy of them since they
enlisted,--finding out which of them have families, or any one dependent
on them, and helping them in the finest and most delicate way possible.
There are others like him here, and it's a fortunate circumstance, for
there's not a man but would suffer, himself,--and, what's more, let his
family suffer at home,--before he'd give up the idea for which they are
contending now."

"'Well, good luck to them!' said the Captain as we came away; and so say
I," finished Jack.

"And I,"--"And I," responded some of the men. "We must see this man when
they come over here."

"I'll bet you a shilling," said Jim, pulling out a bit of currency,
"that he'll make his mark to-night."

"Lend us the change, Given, and I'll take you up," said one of the men.

The others laughed. "He don't mean it," said Jim: which, indeed, he
didn't. Nobody seemed inclined to run any risks by betting on the other
side of so likely a proposition.

This talk took place late in the afternoon, near the head-quarters of
the commanding General; and the men directly scattered to prepare for
the work of the evening: some to clean a bayonet, or furbish up a rifle;
others to chat and laugh over the chances and to lay plans for the
morrow,--the morrow which was for them never to dawn on earth; and yet
others to sit down in their tents and write letters to the dear ones at
home, making what might, they knew, be a final-farewell,--for the fight
impending was to be a fierce one,--or to read a chapter in a little book
carried from some quiet fireside, balancing accounts perchance, in
anticipation of the call of the Great Captain to come up higher.

Through the whole afternoon there had been a tremendous cannonading of
the fort from the gunboats and the land forces: the smooth, regular
engineer lines were broken, and the fresh-sodded embankments torn and
roughened by the unceasing rain of shot and shell.

About six o'clock there came moving up the island, over the burning
sands and under the burning sky, a stalwart, splendid-appearing set of
men, who looked equal to any d