collar and pushed him gently forward. As he
approached the tent pole the frantic man sprang to it and with cat-like
agility seized the handle of the bowie-knife, plucked the weapon from
the scabbard and thrusting the captain aside leaped upon the general
with the fury of a madman, hurling him to the ground and falling
headlong upon him as he lay. The table was overturned, the candle
extinguished and they fought blindly in the darkness. The
provost-marshal sprang to the assistance of his Superior officer and was
himself prostrated upon the struggling forms. Curses and inarticulate
cries of rage and pain came from the welter of limbs and bodies; the
tent came down upon them and beneath its hampering and enveloping folds
the struggle went on. Private Tassman, returning from his errand and
dimly conjecturing the situation, threw down his rifle and laying hold
of the flouncing canvas at random vainly tried to drag it off the men
under it; and the sentinel who paced up and down in front, not daring to
leave his beat though the skies should fall, discharged his rifle. The
report alarmed the camp; drums beat the long roll and bugles sounded the
assembly, bringing swarms of half-clad men into the moonlight, dressing
as they ran, and falling into line at the sharp commands of their
officers. This was well; being in line the men were under control; they
stood at arms while the general's staff and the men of his escort
brought order out of confusion by lifting off the fallen tent and
pulling apart the breathless and bleeding actors in that strange
contention.

Breathless, indeed, was one: the captain was dead; the handle of the
bowie-knife, protruding from his throat, was pressed back beneath his
chin until the end had caught in the angle of the jaw and the hand that
delivered the blow had been unable to remove the weapon. In the dead
man's hand was his sword, clenched with a grip that defied the strength
of the living. Its blade was streaked with red to the hilt.

Lifted to his feet, the general sank back to the earth with a moan and
fainted. Besides his bruises he had two sword-thrusts--one through the
thigh, the other through the shoulder.

The spy had suffered the least damage. Apart from a broken right arm,
his wounds were such only as might have been incurred in an ordinary
combat with nature's weapons. But he was dazed and seemed hardly to know
what had occurred. He shrank away from those attending him, cowered upon
the