d so,
you see, it is the same for both."

Again the teeth of the devouring poison fastened on him, and, when it
left him, a grey pallor had settled upon the face.

Blake Shorland said to him gently: "How do you feel about it all?"

As if in gentle protest the head moved slightly. "All's well, all's
well," the low voice said.

A pause, in which the cries of the wounded came through the smoke, and
then the dying man, feeling the approach of another convulsion, said: "A
cigarette, mon ami."

Blake Shorland put a cigarette between his lips and lighted it.

"And now a little wine," the fallen soldier added. The surgeon, who had
come again for a moment, nodded and said: "It may help."

Barre's native servant brought a bottle of champagne intended to be
drunk after the expected victory, but not in this fashion!

Shorland understood. This brave young soldier of a dispossessed family
wished to show no fear of pain, no lack of outward and physical courage
in the approaching and final shock. He must do something that was
conventional, natural, habitual, that would take his mind from the thing
itself. At heart he was right. The rest was a question of living like a
strong-nerved soldier to the last. The tobacco-smoke curled feebly
from his lips, and was swallowed up in the clouds of powder-smoke
that circled round them. With his head on his native servant's knee he
watched Shorland uncork the bottle and pour the wine into the surgeon's
medicine-glass. It was put in his fingers; he sipped it once and then
drank it all. "Again," he said.

Again it was filled. The cigarette was smoked nearly to the end.
Shorland must unburden his mind of one thought, and he said: "You took
what was meant for me, my friend."

"Ah, no, no! It was the fortune, we will say the good fortune. C'est
bien!" Then, "The wine, the wine," he said, and his fingers again
clasped those of Shorland tremblingly. He took the glass in his right
hand and lifted it. "God guard all at home, God keep France!" he said.
He was about to place the glass to his lips, when a tremor seized him,
and the glass fell from his hand. He fell back, his breath quick and
vanishing, his eyes closing, and a faint smile upon his lips. "It is
always the same with France," he said; "always the same." And he was
gone.

V

The French had bought their victory dear with the death of Alencon
Barre, their favourite officer. When they turned their backs upon a
quelled insurrection, th