ifted him against his
knee. He struck me as ill-favoured enough--not to say ghastly--with
the dust and blood on his face (for a splinter had laid open his
cheek), and its complexion an unhealthy white against his matted
hair. I took note that he wore sergeant's stripes.

"What's the poor thing called?" someone inquired of the sentry.

The sentry, being an Irishman, mistook the idiom. "He's called a
Bull," said he, stroking the barrel of his rifle. "H'what the divvle
else?"

"But 'tis the man we mean."

"Oh, _he's_ called Letcher; sergeant; North Wilts."

Letcher gulped down a mouthful of water and managed to sit up,
pushing the butcher's arm aside.

"Where's Plinlimmon?" he asked hoarsely. "Hurt?"

"Here I am, old fellow," answered Archibald, reeling rather than
stepping forward. "A crack on the skull, that's all. Hope you're
none the worse?" His own face was bleeding from a nasty graze on the
right temple.

"H'm?" said Letcher. "Mean it? You'd better mean it by--!" he
snarled suddenly, his face twisted with pain or malice. "You weren't
too smart, the first go. Why the deuce didn't you hamstring the
brute? You heard them shouting?"

"That's asackly what I told 'en," put in the butcher.

"Oh, stow your fat talk, you silly Devonshire-man!" The butcher's
tongue was too big for his mouth, and Letcher mimicked him
ferociously and with an accuracy quite wonderful, his exhaustion
considered. He leaned back and panted. "The brute touched me--under
the thigh, here. I doubt I'm bleeding." He closed his eyes and
fainted away.

They found, on lifting him, that he spoke truth. The bull had gored
him in the leg: a nasty wound beginning at the back of the knee,
running upward and missing the main artery by a bare inch. A squad
of soldiers had run out, hearing the shot, and these bore him into
the Citadel, Master Archibald limping behind.

The crowd began to disperse, and I made my way back to Miss
Plinlimmon.

"A providential escape!" said she on hearing my report. "I am glad
that Archibald acquitted himself well." She went on to tell me of a
youthful adventure of her own with a mountain bull, in her native
Wales.

Some days later she sent me a poem on the occurrence:

"Lo, as he strides his native scene,
The bull--how dignified his mien!
When tethered, otherwise!
Yet _one_ his tether broke and ran
After a military man
Before these very eyes!"

"I feel th