with Eugene and felt the thrill of the bravery
of fellowship at sight of the giant's flushed, confident face revelling
in the spirit of a charge. And then, just then, Eugene convulsively
threw up his arms, dropped his rifle, and whirled on his heel. As he
went down his hand clutched at his left breast and came away red and
dripping. After one wild, backward glance, Peterkin plunged ahead.

"Eugene!" Hugo Mallin had stopped and bent over Eugene in the supreme
instinct of that terrible second, supporting his comrade's head.

"The bullet is not--made--." Eugene whispered, the ruling passion strong
to the last. A flicker of the eyelids, a gurgle in the throat, and he
was dead.

Fracasse had been right behind them. The sight of a man falling was
something for which he was prepared; something inevitably a part of the
game. A man down was a man out of the fight, service finished. A man up
with a rifle in his hand was a man who ought to be in action.

"Here, you are not going to get out this way!" he said in the irritation
of haste, slapping Hugo with his sword. "Go on! That's hospital-corps
work."

Hugo had a glimpse of the captain's rigid features and a last one of
Eugene's, white and still and yet as if he were about to speak his
favorite boast; then he hurried on, his side glance showing other
prostrate forms. One form a few yards away half rose to call "Hospital!"
and fell back, struck mortally by a second bullet.

"That's what you get if you forget instructions," said Fracasse with no
sense of brutality, only professional exasperation, "Keep down, you
wounded men!" he shouted at the top of his voice.

The colonel of the 128th had not looked for immediate resistance. He had
told Fracasse's men to occupy the knoll expeditiously. But by the common
impulse of military training, no less than in answer to the whistle's
call, in face of the withering fire they dropped to earth at the base of
the knoll, where Hugo threw himself down at full length in his place in
line next to Peterkin.

"Fire pointblank at the crest in front of you! I saw a couple of men
standing up there!" called Fracasse. "Fire fast! That's the way to keep
down their fire--pointblank, I tell you! You're firing into the sky! I
want to see more dust kicked up. Fire fast! We'll have them out of there
soon! They're only an outpost."

Hugo was firing vaguely, like a man in a dream, and thinking that maybe
up there on the knoll were the two Browns he had m