in paper wrote, as
Ned had done, brief wills, which they put in the inside pockets of their
coats. Always they spoke very gently to one another, these wild spirits
of the border. The strange and softening shadow which Ned had noticed
before was deepening over them all.

Bowie was again in the hospital, having been bruised severely in a fall
from one of the walls, but his spirit was as dauntless as ever.

"The assault by the Mexicans in full force cannot be delayed much
longer," he said to Ned. "Santa Anna is impatient and energetic, and he
surely has brought up all his forces by this time."

"Do you think we can beat them off?" asked Ned.

Bowie hesitated a little, and then he replied frankly:

"I do not. We have only one hundred and seventy or eighty men to guard
the great space that we have here. But in falling we will light such a
flame that it will never go out until Texas is free."

Ned talked with him a little longer, and always Bowie spoke as if the
time were at hand when he should die for Texas. The man of wild and
desperate life seemed at this moment to be clothed about with the mantle
of the seer.

The Mexican batteries fired very little that day, and Santa Anna's
soldiers kept well out of range. They had learned a deep and lasting
respect for the Texan rifles. Hundreds had fallen already before them,
and now they kept under cover.

The silence seemed ominous and brooding to Ned. The day was bright, and
the flag of no quarter burned a spot of blood-red against the blue sky.
Ned saw Mexican officers occasionally on the roofs of the higher
buildings, but he took little notice of them. He felt instinctively
that the supreme crisis had not yet come. They were all waiting,
waiting.

The afternoon drew its slow length away in almost dead silence, and the
night came on rather blacker than usual. Then the word was passed for
all to assemble in the courtyard. They gathered there, Bowie dragging
his sick body with the rest. Every defender of the Alamo was present.
The cannon and the walls were for a moment deserted, but the Mexicans
without did not know it.

There are ineffaceable scenes in the life of every one, scenes which,
after the lapse of many years, are as vivid as of yesterday. Such, the
last meeting of the Texans, always remained in the mind of Ned. They
stood in a group, strong, wiry men, but worn now by the eternal
vigilance and danger of the siege. One man held a small torch, which
cast but a d