hey had got a long 48-pounder, which they
worked with a swivel joint, or the like, and threw a great roaring shot
into any part of the French lines.

As to the commander-in-chief and his generals, they were dotted about
a long way in the rear, and no shot came as far as them; but in the
trenches the men began now to fall fast, especially on the left attack,
which faced the round bastion. Our young colonel had got his heavy
battery, and every now and then he would divert the general efforts
of the bastion, and compel it to concentrate its attention on him, by
pounding away at it till it was all in sore places. But he meant it
worse mischief than that. Still, as heretofore, regarding it as the key
to Philipsburg, he had got a large force of engineers at work driving a
mine towards it, and to this he trusted more than to breaching it; for
the bigger holes he made in it by day were all stopped at night by the
townspeople.

This colonel was not a favorite in the division to which his brigade
belonged. He was a good soldier, but a dull companion. He was also
accused of hauteur and of an unsoldierly reserve with his brother
officers.

Some loose-tongued ones even called him a milk-sop, because he was
constantly seen conversing with the priest--he who had nothing to say to
an honest soldier.

Others said, "No, hang it, he is not a milk-sop: he is a tried soldier:
he is a sulky beggar all the same." Those under his immediate command
were divided in opinion about him. There was something about him they
could not understand. Why was his sallow face so stern, so sad? and why
with all that was his voice so gentle? somehow the few words that did
fall from his mouth were prized. One old soldier used to say, "I would
rather have a word from our brigadier than from the commander-in-chief."
Others thought he must at some part of his career have pillaged a
church, taken the altar-piece, and sold it to a picture-dealer in Paris,
or whipped the earrings out of the Madonna's ears, or admitted the
female enemy to quarter upon ungenerous conditions: this, or some such
crime to which we poor soldiers are liable: and now was committing the
mistake of remording himself about it. "Always alongside the chaplain,
you see!"

This cold and silent man had won the heart of the most talkative
sergeant in the French army. Sergeant La Croix protested with many oaths
that all the best generals of the day had commanded him in turn, and
that his presen