cavalry on the move at night. A
high-pitched yell on the left told us that the disturbers were
friends--the cavalry of the attack, who had missed their direction in
the darkness, and were feeling blindly for some sort of support and
camping-ground. The difficulty explained, they jingled on.

"Double pickets out there; by your arms lie down and sleep the rest,"
said the major, and the square melted away as the men scrambled for
their places by the fires.

When I woke I saw Mulvaney, the night-dew gemming his mustache, leaning
on his rifle at picket, lonely as Prometheus on his rock, with I know
not what vultures tearing his liver.

THE SIRE DE MALETROIT'S DOOR

By R. L. STEVENSON

Denis de Beaulieu was not yet two-and-twenty, but he counted himself a
grown man, and a very accomplished cavalier into the bargain. Lads
were early formed in that rough, warfaring epoch; and when one has been
in a pitched battle and a dozen raids, has killed one's man in an
honorable fashion, and knows a thing or two of strategy and mankind, a
certain swagger in the gait is surely to be pardoned. He had put up
his horse with due care, and supped with due deliberation; and then, in
a very agreeable frame of mind, went out to pay a visit in the gray of
the evening. It was not a very wise proceeding on the young man's
part. He would have done better to remain beside the fire or go
decently to bed. For the town was full of the troops of Burgundy and
England under a mixed command; and though Denis was there on
safe-conduct, his safe-conduct was like to serve him little on a chance
encounter.

It was September, 1429; the weather had fallen sharp; a flighty piping
wind, laden with showers, beat about the township; and the dead leaves
ran riot along the streets. Here and there a window was already
lighted up; and the noise of men-at-arms making merry over supper
within, came forth in fits and was swallowed up and carried away by the
wind. The night fell swiftly; the flag of England, fluttering on the
spire-top, grew ever fainter and fainter against the flying clouds--a
black speck like a swallow in the tumultuous, leaden chaos of the sky.
As the night fell the wind rose, and began to hoot under archways and
roar amid the treetops in the valley below the town.

Denis de Beaulieu walked fast and was soon knocking at his friend's
door; but though he promised himself to stay only a little while and
make an early return, his welco