hen he managed to crawl out of the rocky rift into which he had been
thrown, and stood up, all ragged, with his red coatee split up the back,
and one sleeve torn out at the shoulder.

For a few minutes he stood listening to the shouting and firing far
below and watched the smoke curling up; his face was all puckered up,
and he rubbed himself where he was pricked and scratched. Then he
examined his damaged clothes, and lastly he climbed up to where the mule
lay, on its side with its heels higher up the slope than its
stretched-out neck and head.

"Poor old fellow!" he said. "Did the shooting frighten you? Come on,
get up."

But the mule did not stir, and the boy knelt down by it to raise its
head a little, but only to let it sink back, and shrink away, in
horror--the poor animal, who had always been ready to eat grass or
pieces of unripe melon from his hand, lay dead, pierced by the bullet,
and bayonetted in three places by the French.

And now the tears which the little fellow had manfully kept back began
to flow fast, and he knelt down by the poor beast's side, feeling
stunned.

And as he knelt there the firing went on, but in a scattered way, as the
200th fell back with the enemy in full pursuit, the boy turning at last
to watch the progress of the fight far below and seeing the scarlet
coats of his friends growing more and more distant in the smoke, and the
blue uniforms of the French as they crowded after them, till the reports
of the muskets grew faint; and the echoes from high up on either side of
the gorge more soft till they died away.

Dick's first idea was to hurry off, but there was only one way, and that
was down the wooded ravine; but he could not go that way, for the place
between him and his friends was swarming with the French soldiers, and
he shuddered at the thought of trying to get through them. He had of
late seen and heard so much of their cruel acts.

What should he do?

He had hardly asked himself this question when he heard a shout, and his
heart leaped--it was his friends coming back.

No; he could see below him the uniforms of the French soldiers, and
their bayonets flashing in the golden light of the sinking sun, and in
fear he shrank back among the thick bushes and hid below the place where
he had been thrown, to lie listening as the voices came nearer, a peep
or two that he stole showing that the enemy were spread out low down by
the rugged track, evidently very busy, and it s