lder, bringing him down like a bag of meal. He arose, feeling
himself. "Now, by the Great and Unterrified Continental----" he began,
as he always did at the monotony of being hit. Then his disgust changed
to wonder. "W'y," he cried, "I'm not either, I only thought I was!"

They mounted higher, and the business grew hotter. Each man had to look
to himself more and more sharply, lest he forget that economy of the
individual was now the hope of the regiment. But for all that, when a
Missourian craved tobacco--it is a craving not to be denied, in no
matter what danger, as most any fireman knows--he would leave cover to
beg his nearest neighbor for a chew, and obtaining it, would feel the
heart put back into him.

As they drew close under the first of the trenches, they concentrated
for a bit of sharp in-fighting, and so suffered more. But once they
provoked the next volley, they meant to rush the works. The Imperialists
though were loath to squander the one ball to a carbine when Indian-like
fighters like these were so near. They had one mountain piece, a brass
howitzer, and the gunner stood ready, the lanyard in his hand. But he
hesitated, bewildered. His targets were not twenty paces below, yet
nowhere crouching behind the rocks were the foe massed together. His
pride forbade that he waste twelve pounds of death on a single man.

But suddenly that happened which the gunner never in this life
explained. Poised expectant in the lull of the fray, he was trembling
under the tense silence, when he saw the impetuous Don Rodrigo dart up
the slope, full against the muzzle. At the same instant he heard shouts
of warning behind him, and he heard the tiradores there above firing at
someone almost at his feet. But the figure that had scaled up the back
of the hill, crawling around the trench, was already on him. He drew
back his arm to drive the heavy shot through Don Rodrigo in front, but
only to feel the cord in his hand part before a knife's keen edge. With
a cry of dismay he sprang to grasp the rope's end, but as in a vision a
head of curly black and an odd smile rose between, and a swinging fist
of a great bared arm crashed back his chin, and he sank as a brained ox.

"Lambaste 'em, Din Driscoll!"

It was a rapturous shout, and Cal Grinders, passing Rodrigo, tumbled
over the earth-heap and joined his colonel against five hundred. Behind
swarmed others into the newly awakened hell, coatless men of Saxon necks
tanned a dark ru