s
reflections were disturbed by Captain de Banyan.

"Lieutenant Somers, I'm proud to know you, as I had occasion to remark
before. I have heard of you. You distinguished yourself in the battle of
Williamsburg," said Captain de Banyan.

"You speak very handsomely of me--much better than I deserve, sir."

"Not a particle, my boy. If there is a man in the army that can
appreciate valor, that man is Captain de Banyan. You are modest,
Lieutenant Somers--of course you are modest; all brave men are
modest--and I forgive your blushes. I've seen service, my boy. Though not
yet thirty-five, I served in the Crimea, in the Forty-seventh Royal
Infantry; and was at the battles of Solferino, Magenta, Palestro, and
others too numerous to mention."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Lieutenant Somers, filled with admiration by the
magnificent record of the captain. "Then you are not an American?"

"Oh, yes, I am! I happened to be in England when the Russian war
commenced. So, being fond of a stirring life, I entered as a private in
the Forty-seventh. If the war had continued six months longer, I should
have come out a brigadier-general, though. Promotion is not so rapid in
the British army as in our own. I was at the storming of the Redan; I was
one of the first to mount the breach. Just as I had raised my musket----"

"I thought you were an officer--a colonel at least," interposed
Lieutenant Somers.

"My sword, I should have said. Just as I had raised my sword to cut down
a Russian who threatened to bayonet me, a cannon-ball struck the butt of
my gun----"

"Your gun?"

"The handle of my sword, I should have said, and snapped it off like a
pipe-stem."

"But didn't it snap your hand off too?" asked the lieutenant, rather
bewildered by the captain's statements.

"Not at all; that is the most wonderful part of the story. It didn't even
graze my skin."

"That was very remarkable," added Lieutenant Somers, who could not see,
for the life of him, how a cannon-ball could hit the handle of the sword
without injuring the hand which grasped it.

"It was very remarkable, indeed; but I was reminded of the circumstance
by the remembrance that you were hit in the head by a bullet, which did
not kill you. I shouldn't have mentioned the affair if I hadn't called to
mind my own experience; for life yourself, Somers, I am a modest man; in
fact, every brave man is necessarily a modest man."

"Were you ever wounded, Captain de Banyan?"

"Bless you, h