honour to be
opposed to the foot guards?'

'We are Dumbarton's regiment, sir,' cried the other. 'We shall give ye
good cause to remember having met us.'

'We shall be across presently to make your further acquaintance,' Sir
Gervas answered, and at the same moment rolled, horse and all, into the
ditch, amid a roar of exultation from the soldiers. Half-a-dozen of his
musqueteers sprang instantly, waist deep, into the mud, and dragged our
friend out of danger, but the charger, which had been shot through the
heart, sank without a struggle.

'There is no harm!' cried the Baronet, springing to his feet, 'I would
rather fight on foot like my brave musqueteers.' The men broke out
a-cheering at his words, and the fire on both sides became hotter
than ever. It was a marvel to me, and to many more, to see these brave
peasants with their mouths full of bullets, loading, priming, and firing
as steadily as though they had been at it all their lives, and holding
their own against a veteran regiment which has proved itself in other
fields to be second to none in the army of England.

The grey light of morning was stealing over the moor, and still the
fight was undecided. The fog hung about us in feathery streaks, and
the smoke from our guns drifted across in a dun-coloured cloud, through
which the long lines of red coats upon the other side of the rhine
loomed up like a battalion of giants. My eyes ached and my lips prinkled
with the smack of the powder. On every side of me men were falling fast,
for the increased light had improved the aim of the soldiers. Our good
chaplain, in the very midst of a psalm, had uttered a great shout
of praise and thanksgiving, and so passed on to join those of his
parishioners who were scattered round him upon the moor. Hope-above
Williams and Keeper Milson, under-officers, and among the stoutest
men in the company, were both down, the one dead and the other sorely
wounded, but still ramming down charges, and spitting bullets into his
gun-barrel. The two Stukeleys of Somerton, twins, and lads of great
promise, lay silently with grey faces turned to the grey sky, united in
death as they had been in birth. Everywhere the dead lay thick amid the
living. Yet no man flinched from his place, and Saxon still walked
his horse among them with words of hope and praise, while his stern,
deep-lined face and tall sinewy figure were a very beacon of hope to
the simple rustics. Such of my scythesmen as could hand