he cry among the enemy,
'Aime at the black plume,' attested his prominence; but he black plum
was still unscathed when spring twilight fell. The din began to subside;
recalls were sounded by the besiegers; and Berenger heard his own
exploit bawled in the ear of the deaf commandant, who was advancing over
the bridge. The old captain complimented him, told him that he should
be well reported of to M. le Duc and Sieur la Noue, and invited him to
supper and bed in his own quarters. The supper Berenger accepted, so
soon as he should know how it was with his brother; but as to bed, he
intended to watch his brother, and visit his post form time to time.

The captain entered by the main door of the chapel, where ten or twelve
wounded were now lying, tended by peasant women. Berenger merely
passed through, seeing as he went the black hood busy over a
freshly-brought-in-patient. He found a door which admitted him through
the rough screen of boards to the choir where he had been in the
earlier part of the day. The moonlight came through the shivered eastern
windows, but a canvas curtain had been hung so as to shelter Philip's
vaulted recess from the cold draught, and the bed itself, with a chair
beside it, looked neat, clean, and comfortable. Philip himself was
cheery; he said the bullet had made a mere flesh-wound, and had passed
out on the other side, and the Lady of Hope, as they called he, was just
such another as Aunt Cecily, and had made him very comfortable, with
clean linen, good cool drinks, and the tenderest hand. But he was very
sleepy, so sleepy that he hardly cared to hear of the combat, only he
roused himself for a moment to say, 'Brother, I have seen Dolly.'

'Dolly!'

'Our sister Dolly.'

'Ah, Phil! many a strange visitor has come to me in the Walnut Chamber
at home.'

'I tell you I was in my perfect senses,' returned Philip; 'there she
was, just as when we left her. And, what was stranger still, she talked
French.'

'Sleep and see her again,' laughed Berenger.

CHAPTER XLII. THE SILVER BULLET

I am all wonder, O my son, my soul
Is stunned within me; powers to speak to him
Or to interrogate him have I none,
Or even to look on him.
--Cowper's ODYSSEY

In his waking senses Philip adhered to his story that his little sister
Dolly had stood at the foot of his bed, called him '_le pauvre_' and
had afterwards disappeared, led away by the nursing lady. It seemed