after all."

"Yes, sir; that's it, sir," said the lad bitterly; "bit o' common brass
as got into the service, and you orficers and old Gee and the rest of
you drilled up and polished and dressed up and put some gilt on; but
when yer comes to rub it off, I'm on'y a bit o' brass after all."

"Yes, you know exactly--coward!--dog!"

"Don't, sir!" cried the poor fellow in a choking voice; "don't! It's
like laying it on to a chap with a wire whip."

"Then do your duty. Go."

"I can't, sir; I can't," cried the lad, literally writhing, as if the
blows were falling upon his back and sides. "I dessay I am a coward,
but I'd follow you anywheres, sir, if the bullets was whistling round
us, and them devils were waiting for us with their knives; but I can't
go and leave you now, sir. You ain't fit to leave. It'd be like
killing you--murdering of you, sir, with the cold and starvation."

"It is your duty to go."

"But you don't know how bad you are, sir," pleaded the lad, with the
great sobs struggling to escape from his breast. "You don't know, sir;
but I do, sir. You'd be frozen stiff before it was light again."

"Perhaps; but I should die knowing that an effort was being made to save
those we have left behind."

"You've done all you can do, sir," pleaded Gedge passionately. "We
can't do no more."

"I can't, but you can. I call upon you once more to go and do this
thing. If you have any manhood in you, go."

"I can't, sir," groaned Gedge.

"You coward!--it's your duty to go."

"It ain't, sir; it can't be, to leave my orficer to die like this. I
know it can't. Why, if I did, and got the help, and took the men back,
and the Colonel got to know how, he'd think it warn't worth getting it
at such a price. He'd call me a cowardly dog and a hound, and the lads
would groan and spit at me. Why, they'd cob me when they got me alone,
and I couldn't say a word, because I should feel, as I always should to
the last day I lived, that I'd been a miserable sneak."

"I tell you it is your duty, my man," cried Bracy again.

"Don't send me, sir! I ain't afraid," pleaded Gedge once more. "It's
leaving you to die in the cold and dark. I can't go!--I can't go!"

Bracy struggled up at this, supporting himself with his left hand, moved
now as he was by his companion's devotion; but he choked down all he
longed to say in the one supreme effort he was making to fulfil the
mission he had failed in by another hand.

"I am