ur
thoughts?"

"Well, it was a most absurd thing, but I found myself, though I could
scarcely hear my own voice, repeating a verse from one of the old
cavalier ballads:--

"'We were standing foot to foot, and giving shoot for shoot;
Hot and strong went our volleys at the blue;
We knelt, but not for grace, and the fuse lit up the face
Of the gunner, as the round shot by us flew.'"

Endicott smiles. "But it was a good battle-cry, Allen. I remember your
reciting verses at Cambridge in your college-days, but it was generally
'A sonnet to your mistress' eyebrows,'--some fair one who had conquered
your heart for a week perhaps."

Dorris is not to be diverted from the absorbing topic of ball and
bayonet, and returns to the charge.

"But how did you feel when you were wounded?" she asks again.

"Oh, I did not know where I was hit. In the midst of the fight I
wondered why I couldn't move my left foot; it was like lead in the
stirrup, and looking down I saw the mark where the ball had struck, and
the blood following it. It was a little quieter then, so I got the
sergeant near me to clip, and ease my foot a little. But you should have
seen L'Estrange: he was wounded then; and when the order came to charge
he rushed on, waving his sword, with the blood dripping from his arm.
How the men rushed after him! And when he came back supporting another
poor fellow, and insisting on his being cared for first, you should have
heard the men cheer him."

"And you, Allen," suggests Endicott,--"how did you get on with that
wound of yours?"

"Well, I was rather faint by the time we were ready to go back to camp;
but somebody set me straight in the saddle when I reeled, and I managed
to get back all right."

"But where was the surgeon all the while?"

"To tell the truth, I was so much better off than most of the poor
fellows, Keith, I made him help the rest. That was all."

"So you took the chance of enjoying a British surgeon's tender mercies,
for the sake of men, who, perhaps, could not live anyway. Allen, you
always were a good-natured Don Quixote."

Allen laughed as if he saw something beneath the words which excused
their lightness, but Dorris frowned, as she looked admiringly at the
manly fellow so ready to see his comrade's unselfish bravery, so
unconscious of his own. She often saw the wounded soldier leaning on
Endicott's arm, and their words seemed grave and earnest, while
Endicott's face seemed for a time