till beating at the
laths.

The child understood no English, and moreover was too small to help.
But it seemed that the corporal's voice emboldened him, for he drew
near and stood watching.

'Who did _this_, little one?' asked Corporal Sam, nodding towards the
corpse, as he rubbed the charred dust from his hands.

For a while the child stared at him, not comprehending; but by-and-by
pointed beneath the table and then back at its mother.

The corporal walked to the table, stooped, and drew from under it a
rifle and a pouch half-filled with cartridges.

'Tell him we've _been_ there.' He seemed to hear the rifleman Bill's
voice repeating the words, close at hand. He recognised the badge on
the pouch.

He was shaking where he stood; and this, perhaps, was why the child
stared at him so oddly. But, looking into the wondering young eyes,
he read only the question, 'What are you going to do?'

He hated these riflemen. Nay, looking around the room, how he hated
all the foul forces that had made this room what it was! . . .
And yet, on the edge of resolve, he knew that he must die for what he
meant to do . . . that the thing was unpardonable, that in the end he
must be shot down, and rightly, as a dog.

He remembered his dog Rover, how the poor brute had been tempted to
sheep-killing at night, on the sly; and the look in his eyes when,
detected at length, he had crawled forward to his master to be shot.
No other sentence was possible, and Rover had known it.

Had he no better excuse? Perhaps not. . . . He only knew that he
could not help it; that this thing had been done, and by the consent
of many . . . and that as a man he must kill for it, though as a
soldier he deserved only to be killed.

With the child's eyes still resting on him in wonder, he set the
rifle on its butt and rammed down a cartridge; and so, dropping on
hands and knees, crept to the window.

CHAPTER VII.

Early next morning Sergeant Wilkes picked his way across the ruins of
the great breach and into the town, keeping well to windward of the
fatigue parties already kindling fires and collecting the dead bodies
that remained unburied.

Within and along the sea-wall San Sebastian was a heap of burnt-out
ruins. Amid the stones and rubble encumbering the streets, lay
broken muskets, wrenched doors, shattered sticks of furniture--
mirrors, hangings, women's apparel, children's clothes--loot dropped
by the pillagers as valueless, wrecka