t soldier
is not a man to trust. After sitting rigid and silent, however, as if
we had both stiff necks, for a very few minutes, the feeling passed
completely away, and from that day to this it has never returned to me.
You see familiarity breeds contempt with bullets as with other things,
and though it is no easy matter to come to like them, like the King of
Sweden or my Lord Cutts, it is not so very hard to become indifferent to
them.

The cornet's death did not remain long unavenged. A little old man with
a sickle, who had been standing near Sir Gervas, gave a sudden sharp
cry, and springing up into the air with a loud 'Glory to God!' fell flat
upon his face dead. A bullet had struck him just over the right eye.
Almost at the same moment one of the peasants in the waggon was shot
through the chest, and sat up coughing blood all over the wheel. I saw
Master Joshua Pettigrue catch him in his long arms, and settle some
bedding under his head, so that he lay breathing heavily and pattering
forth prayers. The minister showed himself a man that day, for amid the
fierce carbine fire he walked boldly up and down, with a drawn rapier in
his left hand--for he was a left-handed man--and his Bible in the other.
'This is what you are dying for, dear brothers,' he cried continually,
holding the brown volume up in the air; 'are ye not ready to die for
this?' And every time he asked the question a low eager murmur of assent
rose from the ditches, the waggon, and the road.

'They aim like yokels at a Wappenschaw,' said Saxon, seating himself
on the side of the waggon. 'Like all young soldiers they fire too high.
When I was an adjutant it was my custom to press down the barrels of the
muskets until my eye told me that they were level. These rogues think
that they have done their part if they do but let the gun off, though
they are as like to hit the plovers above us as ourselves.'

'Five of the faithful have fallen,' said Hope-above Williams. 'Shall we
not sally forth and do battle with the children of Antichrist? Are we to
lie here like so many popinjays at a fair for the troopers to practise
upon?'

'There is a stone barn over yonder on the hill-side,' I remarked. 'If
we who have horses, and a few others, were to keep the dragoons in
play, the people might be able to reach it, and so be sheltered from the
fire.'

'At least let my brother and me have a shot or two back at them,' cried
one of the marksmen beside the wheel.

To