. The corporal followed, nursing
his wounded hand. As they reached him a bugle sounded the recall.

The assault had failed. At the foot of the breach a soldier of the
4th Regiment, mad with rage, foamed out a curse upon the Royals.
Corporal Sam lifted his bleeding fist and struck him across the
mouth. The sergeant dragged the two apart, slipped an arm under his
comrade's, and led him away as one leads a child. A moment later the
surge of the retreating crowd had almost carried them off their feet.
But the sergeant kept a tight hold, and steered his friend back every
yard of the way along the bullet-swept foreshore. They were less
than half-way across when the dawn broke; and looking in his face he
saw that the lad was crying silently--the powder-grime on his cheeks
streaked and channelled with tears.

CHAPTER III.

'I don't understand ye, lad,' said Sergeant Wilkes.

'Fast enough you'd understand, if you'd but look me in the face,'
answered Corporal Sam, digging his heel into the sand.

The two men lay supine on a cushion of coarse grass; the sergeant
smoking and staring up at the sky, the corporal, with his sound hand
clasping his wounded one behind his head, his gaze fixed gloomily
between his knees and across the dunes, on the still unrepaired
breach in San Sebastian.

A whole fortnight had dragged by since the assault: a fortnight of
idleness for the troops, embittered almost intolerably by a sense
that the Fifth Division had disgraced itself. One regiment blamed
another, and all conspired to curse the artillery--whose practice, by
the way, had been brilliant throughout the siege. Nor did the
gunners fail to retort; but they were in luckier case, being kept
busy all the while, first in shifting their batteries and removing
their worst guns to the ships, next in hauling and placing the new
train that arrived piecemeal from England; and not only busy, but
alert, on the watch against sorties. Also, and although the error of
cannonading the columns of assault had never been cleared up, the
brunt of Wellington's displeasure had fallen on the stormers.
The Marquis ever laid stress on his infantry, whether to use them or
blame them; and when he found occasion to blame, he had words--and
methods--that scarified equally the general of division and the
private soldier.

'Fast enough you understand,' repeated Corporal Sam savagely.

'I do, then, and I don't,' admitted Sergeant Wilkes, after a pause.
T