ll side. Tying a wisp of long grass and weeds round each boot,
he crawled noiselessly up till within a foot or two of the ridge. He
paused a moment to gaze down the dingle. There, well seen from his
vantage point, a couple of miles away, ran a far larger valley, which
was filled with tents. "The enemy's main body!" he thought. He waved
his arm in the direction of the camp, but his comrades did not
understand the action, as they stood peering down upon the lad from
among the trees higher up the slope.

Now flat on his face the boy ventured to peep over the roof ridge down
into the village street at no great distance below. Not an eye was
directed upwards, so far as he could see, the men laughing and
chattering gaily as they drank. Then the temptation seized him, and in
a moment he had lifted the flag from the old chimney in which the
staff was loosely set. "I'm in for it now!" he cried to himself, as he
slid like an avalanche down the roof, leapt to the ground, and made
off up the steep slope towards his comrades, the flag triumphantly in
his hand.

He had reached a spot half way up when suddenly wild shouts were heard
from below, and at the same instant a bullet whistled close past his
ear. A little turn in the path had discovered his head to the enemy.

"In for a penny, in for a pound," shouted the lieutenant, and the
Englishmen prepared to receive the French soldiers dashing up to the
attack. George stumbled on unhurt, but fell at his officer's feet,
utterly breathless. There he lay, unable to rise, while shots were
rapidly exchanged. For a minute's space it was hot work, but then the
French began to fall back, and with a shout the English handful
followed. Fairburn pulled himself together and stood on the edge of
the rock-shelf where he had fallen breathless. To his horror, he saw a
Frenchman on the shelf below, taking deliberate aim at the lieutenant.

With a loud cry, the lad sprang down upon the enemy, regardless of the
steepness of the place, and in an instant the man was locked in his
arms, just as the musket report came. Down the two fell, bounding over
two or three shelves of rock, and then pitching headlong some twenty
or thirty feet into the thick brushwood below.

"You have saved my life, my lad; you are an Englishman worth knowing,"
were the next words the boy heard.

They came buzzing into George's ears some ten minutes later, when, the
brush with the French over, the Englishmen were hastening back