'He captured Harper's Ferry, with his nineteen men so true
And he frightened old Virginny ...'

'Say, Major,' he cried, 'I believe this game of mine is coming out.'

I was now pretty well mad. The thought that old Peter had won, that we
had won beyond our wildest dreams, that if we died there were those
coming who would exact the uttermost vengeance, rode my brain like a
fever. I sprang on the parapet and waved my hand to Stumm, shouting
defiance. Rifle shots cracked out from behind, and I leaped back just
in time for the next shell.

The charge must have been short, for it was a bad miss, landing
somewhere on the glacis. The next was better and crashed on the near
parapet, carving a great hole in the rocky _kranz_. This time my arm
hung limp, broken by a fragment of stone, but I felt no pain.

Blenkiron seemed to bear a charmed life, for he was smothered in dust,
but unhurt. He blew the dust away from his cards very gingerly and
went on playing.

'Sister Anne,' he asked, 'do you see anybody coming?'

Then came a dud which dropped neatly inside on the soft ground.

I was determined to break for the open and chance the rifle fire, for
if Stumm went on shooting the _castrol_ was certain death. I caught
Blenkiron round the middle, scattering his cards to the winds, and
jumped over the parapet.

'Don't apologize, Sister Anne,' said he. 'The game was as good as won.
But for God's sake drop me, for if you wave me like the banner of
freedom I'll get plugged sure and good.'

My one thought was to get cover for the next minutes, for I had an
instinct that our vigil was near its end. The defences of Erzerum were
crumbling like sand-castles, and it was a proof of the tenseness of my
nerves that I seemed to be deaf to the sound. Stumm had seen us cross
the parapet, and he started to sprinkle all the surroundings of the
_castrol_. Blenkiron and I lay like a working-party between the lines
caught by machine-guns, taking a pull on ourselves as best we could.
Sandy had some kind of cover, but we were on the bare farther slope,
and the riflemen on that side might have had us at their mercy.

But no shots came from them. As I looked east, the hillside, which a
little before had been held by our enemies, was as empty as the desert.
And then I saw on the main road a sight which for a second time made me
yell like a maniac. Down that glen came a throng of men and galloping
limbers--a crazy, jostling crowd, s