ent! At the
sudden apparition the yellow horse shied violently, swerving more
than halfway across the road; and its rider, looking backwards and
taken at unawares, was shot out of his stirrups and flung
shoulders-over-head in the dust, where he rolled sideways and lay
still. His pursuers reined up with loud outcries of dismay.
The Major advanced to the body, knelt beside it and turned it over.
The man was bleeding from a cut in the head; but this and a slight
concussion of the brain appeared to be the extent of his injuries.
His neck-cloth being loosened, he groaned heavily. The Major looked
up.

"A nasty shock! For the moment I was half afraid--"

The words died away on his lips. One or two of the riders had
alighted and all stood, or sat their horses, around him in a ring.
He knew their faces, their names; yes, one and all he knew them; and
they wore the uniform of the Troy Volunteer Artillery!

With a tightly beating heart he waited for their recognition. . . .
No sign of recognition came. They eyed him curiously. It seemed to
them that he spoke with something of a foreign accent. To be sure he
articulated oddly--owing to his wound, of which his cheek bore the
visible scar.

He knew them all. Had they not, each one of them, aforetime saluted
him their commander, raising their hand to the peaks of these very
shakos? Had they not marched, doubled, halted, presented arms, stood
at attention, all as he bade them? He recognised the victim of the
accident, too--a little tailor, Tadd by name, who in old days had
borne a reputation for hard drinking.

"I reckon they must ha' stationed you here for a relay," suggested
Gunner Sobey (ever the readiest man, no matter in what company he
found himself) after eyeing the Major for a while.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I beg _yours_. Seemin' to me I've seen your features before,
somewhere, though I can't call up your name." It is a point of
honour with the men of Troy (I may here observe) to profess an
ignorance of their less-favoured neighbours across the harbour.
"I can't call up your name for the moment, dressed as you be--but
'twas thoughtful of 'em, knowing Tadd's habit, to post up a second
figger for a relay. The man seems to be shaken considerable," he
went on. "'Twould be a cruelty, as you might say, to ask him to go
on playin' Boney, with a wife and family dependent and his heart not
in it."

"He certainly isn't fit to mount again, if that is what you m