'If a man did that wrong to me--' Corporal Sam jumped to his feet and stared after the slight figure moving alone across the sandhills. Had his curiosity led him but a few paces farther, he had seen a strange sight indeed. Captain Norman Ramsay, wandering alone and with a burning heart, halted suddenly on the edge of a sand-pit. Below him four men stood, gathered in a knot--two of them artillery officers, the others officers of the line. His first impulse was to turn and escape, for he shunned all companionship just now. But a second glance told him what was happening; and, prompt on the understanding, he plunged straight down the sandy bank, walked up to a young artillery officer and took the pistol out of his hand. That was all, and it all happened in less than three minutes. The would-be duellist--and challenges had been common since the late assault--knew the man and his story. For that matter, every one in the army knew his story. As a ghost he awed them. For a moment he stood looking from one to the other, and so, drawing the charge, tossed the pistol back at its owner's feet and resumed his way. Corporal Sam, who had merely seen the slight figure pass beyond the edge of the dunes, went back and flung himself again on the warm bank. 'If a man did that wrong to me--' he repeated. CHAPTER IV. Certainly, just or unjust, the Marquis could make himself infernally unpleasant. Having ridden over from head-quarters and settled the plans for the new assault, he returned to his main army and there demanded fifty volunteers from each of the fifteen regiments composing the First, Fourth, and Light Divisions--men (as he put it) _who could show other troops how to mount a breach_. It may be guessed with what stomach the Fifth Division digested this; and among them not a man was angrier than their old general, Leith, who now, after a luckless absence, resumed command. The Fifth Division, he swore, could hold their own with any soldiers in the Peninsula. He was furious with the seven hundred and fifty volunteers, and, evading the Marquis's order, which was implicit rather than direct, he added an oath that these interlopers should never lead his men to the breaches. Rage begets rage. During the misty morning hours of August 31st, the day fixed for the assault, these volunteers, held back and chafing with the reserves, could scarcely be restrained from breaking out of the trenches. 'Why,' they demanded, 'had they been fetched here if not to show the way?'--a question for which their officers were in no mood to provide a soft answer.