his hand went to the holster
to draw his revolver, which had not been interfered with.

"Drop that!" roared the Sergeant roughly, and he dragged the prisoner's
hand from the holster, wrenching the revolver from his grasp, and nearly
making him lose his balance and fall out of the saddle. "I've heard all
about it. So you're the Irish scoundrel who summoned that poor lad, and
when he refused to turn traitor and fight against his own country, you
had his hands lashed behind his back and treated him like a dog. Why,
you miserable renegado! if you weren't a wounded man I'd serve you the
same. An officer and a gentleman! Why, you're a disgrace to your brave
countrymen."

"Whisht! whisht!" cried our prisoner contemptuously.

"Whisht! whisht! I'd like to whisht you with a Boer's sjambok," cried
the Sergeant. "Here he finds you wounded and where you'd have lain and
died, and the carrion-birds would have come to the carrion; and when the
brave lad's helped you, given you water, bound up your wound, and put
you on his own beast, like that man did in Scripture, you turn round in
the nastiness of your nature and try to sting him. Bah! I'd be ashamed
of myself. You're not Irish. I don't even call you a man."

The Sergeant's flow of indignation sounded much poorer at the end than
at the beginning; and, his words failing now, I had a chance to get in a
few.

"That's enough, Sergeant," I said. "You forget he's a wounded man and a
prisoner."

"Not half enough, Mr Moray," cried the Sergeant. "I'm not one of your
sort, full of fine feelings; only a plain, straightforward soldier."

"And a brave man," I said, "who cannot trample on a fallen enemy."

Sergeant Briggs gave his slouch felt hat a thrust on one side, while he
angrily tore at his grizzled shock of closely-cut hair: it was too
fierce to be called a scratch.

"All right," he said--"all right; but the sight of him trying to get out
a pistol to hold at the head of him as--as--"

"Be quiet, Sergeant," I said, smiling in spite of myself. "Look: the
poor fellow's turning faint. Let's get him to the camp. Ride alongside
him and hold him up or he'll fall."

"If I do may I--"

"Sergeant!" I shouted.

"Oh, all right, all right. I--But here, I'm not going to let you begin
to domineer over your officer."

"Sergeant," I said gently, and without a word he pressed his horse close
alongside the prisoner, thrust a strong arm beneath him, and we went out
into the