myself," said Cyrus, sharp
vexation in his voice. "But that slide business sprang on us so quickly.
The sudden rumbling, rattling, and pounding jumbled a fellow's wits. I
scarcely understood what was up, even when we were scooting for our
lives."

"I felt a bit white-livered myself, I tell ye; and I'm more hardened to
slides than you are," was the woodsman's answer.

The confession, taken in the light of his conduct, made him doubly a
hero to his city friends.

They thought of him staggering along the mountain, blinded, bewildered,
pelted by clay, with that dragging burden in his arms, a heart tossed by
danger's keenest realization in his breast. And they were silent before
the high courage which can recognize fear, yet refuse to it the mastery.

Neal, whose secret musings were generally crossed by a military thread,
seeing that he had chosen the career of a cavalry-soldier, and hoped
soon to enter Sandhurst College, stared into the heart of the camp-fire,
glowering at fate, because she had not ordained that Herb should serve
the queen with him, and wear upon his resolute heart--as it might
reasonably be expected he would--the Victoria Cross.

Young Farrar's feeling was so strong that it swept his lips at last.

"Blow it all! Herb," he cried. "It's a tearing pity that you can't come
into the English Lancers with me. I don't suppose I'll ever be a V.C.,
but you would sooner or later as sure as gun's iron."

"A 'V.C.!' What's that?" asked Herb.

"A Vigorous Christian, to be sure!" put in Cyrus, who was progressive
and peaceful, teasingly.

But the English boy, full of the dignity of the subject to him, summoned
his best eloquence to describe to the American backwoodsman that little
cross of iron, Victoria's guerdon, which entitles its possessor to
write those two notable letters after his name, and which only
hero-hearts may wear.

But a vision of himself, stripped of "sweater" and moccasins, in cavalry
rig, becrossed and beribboned, serving under another flag than the Stars
and Stripes, was too much for Herb's gravity and for the grim regrets
which wrung him to-night.

"Oh, sugar!" he gasped; and his laughter was like a rocket shooting up
from his mighty throat, and exploding in a hundred sparkles of
merriment.

He laughed long. He laughed insistently. His comrades were won to join
in.

When the fun had subsided, Garst said:--

"Herb Heal, old man, there's something in you to-night which reminds me
of