one its work.

"By Jove, young un, you're right! And in quarter column, too! We've got
'em on toast--on toast, egad!"

I never heard any one not in a book say "egad" before, so I saw
something really out of the way was indeed up.

The Colonel was a man of prompt and decisive action. He sent the orderly
to tell the Major to advance two companies on the left flank and take
cover. Then we led him back through the wood the nearest way, because he
said he must rejoin the main body at once. We found the main body Very
friendly with Noel and H. O. and the others, and Alice was talking to
the Cocked-Hatted One as if she had known him all her life. "I think
he's a general in disguise," Noel said. "He's been giving us chocolate
out of a pocket in his saddle." Oswald thought about the roast rabbit
then--and he is not ashamed to own it--yet he did not say a word. But
Alice is really not a bad sort. She had saved two bars of chocolate for
him and Dicky. Even in war girls can sometimes be useful in their humble
way.

The Colonel fussed about and said, "Take cover there!" and everybody hid
in the ditch, and the horses and the Cocked Hat, with Alice, retreated
down the road out of sight. We were in the ditch too. It was muddy--but
nobody thought of their boots in that perilous moment. It seemed a long
time we were crouching there. Oswald began to feel the water squelching
in his boots; so we held our breath and listened. Oswald laid his ear
to the road like a Red Indian. You would not do this in time of peace,
but when your county is in danger you care but little about keeping your
ears clean. His backwoods strategy was successful. He rose and dusted
himself and said:

"They're coming!"

It was true. The footsteps of the approaching foe were now to be heard
quite audibly, even by ears in their natural position. The wicked enemy
approached. They were marching with a careless swaggeringness that
showed how little they suspected the horrible doom which was about to
teach them England's might and supremeness. Just as the enemy turned the
corner so that we could see them, the Colonel shouted:

"Right section, fire!" and there was a deafening banging.

The enemy's officer said something, and then the enemy got confused and
tried to get into the fields through the hedges. But all was vain. There
was firing now from our men, on the left as well as the right. And then
our Colonel strode nobly up to the enemy's Colonel and demanded
sur