a young
soldier with his mouth full; and, with a certain dry humor, he pointed
vaguely over his shoulder with the fork towards the corpse.

The trenches laughed and assented.

This want of sympathy and justice irritated Dard. "You cursed fools!"
cried he. "He is gone where we must all go--without any trouble. But
look at me. I am always getting barked. Dogs of Prussians! they pick me
out among a thousand. I shall have a headache all the afternoon, you see
else."

Some of our heads would never have ached again: but Dard had a good
thick skull.

Dard pulled out his spilikin savagely.

"I'll wrap it up in paper for Jacintha," said he. "Then that will learn
her what a poor soldier has to go through."

Even this consolation was denied Private Dard.

Corporal Coriolanus Gand, a bit of an infidel from Lyons, who sometimes
amused himself with the Breton's superstition, told him with a grave
face, that the splinter belonged not to him, but to the sutler, and,
though so small, was doubtless a necessary part of his frame.

"If you keep that, it will be a bone of contention between you two,"
said he; "especially at midnight. HE WILL BE ALWAYS COMING BACK TO YOU
FOR IT."

"There, take it away!" said the Breton hastily, "and bury it with the
poor fellow."

Sergeant La Croix presented himself before the colonel with a rueful
face and saluted him and said, "Colonel, I beg a thousand pardons; your
dinner has been spilt--a shot from the bastion."

"No matter," said the colonel. "Give me a piece of bread instead."

La Croix went for it himself, and on his return found Cadel sitting on
one side of Death's Alley, and Dard with his head bound up on the other.
They had got a bottle which each put up in turn wherever he fancied
the next round shot would strike, and they were betting their afternoon
rations which would get the Prussians to hit the bottle first.

La Croix pulled both their ears playfully.

"Time is up for playing marbles," said he. "Be off, and play at duty,"
and he bundled them into the battery.

It was an hour past midnight: a cloudy night. The moon was up, but seen
only by fitful gleams. A calm, peaceful silence reigned.

Dard was sentinel in the battery.

An officer going his rounds found the said sentinel flat instead of
vertical. He stirred him with his scabbard, and up jumped Dard.

"It's all right, sergeant. O Lord! it's the colonel. I wasn't asleep,
colonel."

"I have not accused you. But you