fellow, you ought," he said; "and I ought to have had that
black scoundrel under lock and key days ago. But it is too late now to
talk of what ought to have been done; we must talk of what there is to
do.--But are you hurt?"

"He sent his knife through my jacket, sir," I said, "but it's only a
scratch on the skin;" and fortunately that's what it proved to be, for
we had no room for wounded men.

STORY ONE, CHAPTER ELEVEN.

An hour of council, and then another--our two leaders not seeming to
agree as to the extent of the coming danger. Challenge from the west
roof: "Orderly in sight."

Sure enough, a man on horseback riding very slowly, and as if his horse
was dead beat.

"Surely it isn't that poor fellow come back, because his horse has
failed? He ought to have walked on," said Captain Dyer.

"Same man," said Lieutenant Leigh, looking through his glass; and before
very long, the poor fellow who had gone away at daybreak rode slowly up
to the gate, was admitted, and then had to be helped from his horse,
giving a great sobbing groan as it was done.

"In here, quick!" I said, for I thought I heard the ladies' voices; and
we carried him in to where Mrs Bantem was, as usual, getting ready for
dinner, and there we laid him on a mattress.

"Despatches, captain," he says, holding up the captain's letter to
Colonel Maine. "They didn't get that. They were too many for me. I
dropped one, though, with my pistol, and cut my way through the others."

As he spoke, I untwisted his leather sword-knot, which was cutting into
his wrist, for his hacked and blood-stained sabre was hanging from his
hand.

"Wouldn't go back into the scabbard," he said faintly; and then with a
harsh gasp: Water--water!

He revived then a bit; and as Captain Dyer and Mrs Bantem between them
were attending to, and binding up his wounds, he told us how he had been
set upon ten miles off, and been obliged to fight his way back; and,
poor chap, he had fought; for there were no less than ten lance-wounds
in his arms, thighs, and chest, from a slight prick up to a horrible
gash, deep and long enough, it seemed to me, to let out half-a-dozen
poor fellows' souls.

Just in the middle of it, I saw Captain Dyer start and look strange, for
there was a shadow came across where we were kneeling; and the next
instant he was standing between Miss Ross and the wounded man.

"Pray, go, dear Elsie; this is no place for you," I heard him whisper to
her