eneath his long white moustache. "Many and many a one have I seen; for,
thank Heaven, the children of holy Russia are never wanting in _that_
way; but all of them put together wouldn't make one such man as our old
colonel, Count Pavel Petrovitch[1] Severin. It wasn't only that he faced
danger like a man,--all the others did that,--but he never seemed to
know that there _was_ any danger at all. It was as good as a
re-enforcement of ten battalions to have him among us in the thick of a
fight, and to see his grand, tall figure drawn up to its full height,
and his firm face and keen gray eye turned straight upon the smoke of
the enemy's line, as if defying them to hurt him. And when the very
earth was shaking with the cannonade, and balls were flying thick as
hail, and the hot, stifling smoke closed us in like the shadow of death,
with a flash and a roar breaking through it every now and then, and the
whole air filled with the rush of the shot, like the wind sweeping
through a forest in autumn,--then Petrovitch would light a cigarette and
hum a snatch of a song, as coolly as if he were at a dinner-party in the
English Club at Moscow. And it really seemed as if the bullets ran away
from _him_, instead of his running from them; for he never got hit. But
if he saw any of us beginning to waver, he would call out cheerily:
'Never fear, lads--remember what the song says!' For in those days we
had an old camp-song that we were fond of singing, and the chorus of it
was this:

"'Then fear not swords that brightly shine,
Nor towers that grimly frown;
For God shall march before our line,
And tread our foemen down.'

"He said this so often, that at last he got the nickname among us of
'Ne-Boisya' (Don't fear), and he deserved it, if ever man did yet. Why,
Father Nikolai Pavlovitch himself (the Emperor Nicholas) gave him the
Cross of St. George[2] with his own hand (the St. George from the
emperor's own hand--think of that!) at the siege of Varna, in the year
'28. You see, our battery had been terribly cut up by the Turkish fire,
so at last there were only about half a dozen of us left on our feet. It
was as hot work as I ever was in,--shot pelting, earth-works crumbling,
gabions crashing, guns and gun-carriages tumbling over together, men
falling on every side like leaves, till, all at once, a shot went slap
through our flag-staff, and down came the colors!

"Quick as lightning, Pavel Petrovitch was up on the par