wave of fatherly sympathy.

He rode quickly up to Ned:

"Won't you hold my horse's bridle a minute, young man, while I use my
glasses?" he asked coolly.

Ned's trembling hand caught the reins as a drowning man a straw. The act
steadied his shaking nerves. As the Colonel slowly lowered his glasses
Ned cried through chattering teeth:

"D-d-d-on't y-you think--I-I-I--am d-d-doing p-pretty well, C-colonel,
f-f-f-for my f-f-ffirst battle?"

The Colonel nodded encouragingly:

"Very well, my boy. It's a nasty situation. You'll make a good
soldier."

And then the order to charge!

Across the level field torn by shot and shell, the regiment swept in
grey waves. The gaps filled up silently. They started up the hill and
met the sleet of hissing death. The hill top blazed streams of yellow
flame through the pall of smoke. Men were falling--not one by one, but
in platoons and squads, rolling into heaps of grey blood-soaked flesh
and rags. The regiment paused, staggered, reeled and rallied.

Haggerty fell just in front of Ned, who was loading and firing with the
precision of a machine. If he had a soul--he didn't know it now. The men
were ordered to lie down and fire from the ground.

Haggerty caught Ned's eye as it glanced along his musket searching for
his foe through the cloud of blue black smoke that veiled the world.

"Roll me around, Bye," the Irishman cried, "and make a fince out of
me--I'm done for."

Ned paid no attention to his call, and Haggerty pulled his mangled body
down the hill and doubled himself up in front of his friend.

"Keep down behind me, Bye," he moaned. "I'll make a good fort for ye!"

It was useless to protest, he had erected the fort to suit himself and
Ned was fighting now behind it. The sight of his dying friend steadied
his nerves and sent a thrill of fierce anger like living fire through
his veins. His eye searched the hilltop for his foe. The smoke rolled in
dark grey sulphurous clouds down the slope and shut out the sky line. He
waited and strained his bloodshot eyes to find an opening. It was no use
to waste powder shooting at space. He was too deadly angry now for
that.

A puff of wind lifted the clouds and the blue men could be seen leaping
about their guns. They looked like giants in the smoke fog. Again he
fired and loaded, fired and loaded with clock-like, even steady, hand.
It was tiresome this ramming an old-fashioned muzzle-loading musket
lying flat on the ground. But with