time, pick me
your detachment. Give me a good spice of veterans. I shall get one word
with you before we go out. God bless you!"

"God bless you, Raynal!"

The moment Raynal was gone, Camille beckoned a lieutenant to him,
and ordered half the brigade to form in a strong column on both sides
Death's Alley.

His eye fell upon private Dard, as luck would have it. "Come here," said
he. Dard came and saluted.

"Have you anybody at Beaurepaire that would be sorry if you were
killed?"

"Yes, colonel! Jacintha, that used to make your broth, colonel."

"Take this line to Colonel Raynal. You will find him with the 12th
brigade."

He wrote a few lines in pencil, folded them, and Dard went off with
them, little dreaming that the colonel of his brigade was taking the
trouble to save his life, because he came from Beaurepaire. Colonel
Dujardin then went into his tent, and closed the aperture, and took the
good book the priest had given him, and prayed humbly, and forgave all
the world.

Then he sat down, his head in his hands, and thought of his child, and
how hard it was he must die and never see him. Then he lighted a candle,
and sealed up his orders of valor, and wrote a line, begging that they
might be sent to his sister. He also sealed up his purse, and left a
memorandum that the contents should be given to disabled soldiers of his
brigade upon their being invalided.

Then he took out Josephine's letter. "Poor coward," he said, "let me not
be unkind. See, I burn your letter, lest it should be found, and disturb
the peace you prize so highly. I, too, shall soon be at peace." He
lighted the letter, and dropped it on the ground: it burned slowly away.
He eyed it, despairingly. "Ay," said he, "you perish, last record of an
unhappy love: and even so pass away my life; my hopes of glory, and my
dreams of love; it all ends to-day: at nine and twenty."

He put his white handkerchief to his eyes. Josephine had given it him.
He cried a little.

When he had done crying, he put his white handkerchief in his bosom, and
the whole man was transformed beyond language to express. Powder does
not change more when it catches fire. He rose that moment and went like
a flash of lightning out of the tent. The next, he came down between the
lines of the strong column that stood awaiting orders in Death's Alley.

"Attention!" cried the sergeants; "the colonel!"

There was a dead silence, for the bare sight of that erect and inspired
fi