A horse's hoofs came thudding through the fog, a scarlet coat burst through it like the sun. "The Duke says you're to join your battalion," cried the staff-officer to Devenish. "They're hard pressed at the two-gun battery up above." Devenish wheeled round, and his handsome face was transfigured as he waved his sword. "They want us with the colours!" he shouted. "They can't do without us after all!" And with a laugh and a yell the men sprang forward, the sergeant's face as red as his hair, even the grumbler pressing on Denis's heels, and perhaps only Denis himself with a single thought beyond coming at once to the rescue of the regiment and to grips with the shrouded foe. But Denis had been near Ralph when he turned, near enough to note the radiant look, to catch the smiling eye, and his country's enemy was blotted out of mind by his own. Had he done Devenish justice after all? Was his behaviour as base as it had seemed? Was that shining and fearless face the face of a bad man and a coward? Handsome, joyous, and brave, as strangely ennobled as some faces after death, could any woman have seen this one now, she might rather have forgiven it any crime! So thought Denis to himself as he marched in chill silence among his yelling comrades. He had not been with them at the Alma. It was his first battle, and as yet it had only begun to the ear; not a man had been hit before his eyes, not a flash had penetrated the pale mist ahead upon the heights. Yet the mist was paler than it had ever been; and to the right, over the green valley of the Tchernaya, whence it had risen in patches, there was a faint round radiance in the pall. None noticed it; all eyes were straining through the haze in front of them; but of a sudden, as the bearskins breasted a ridge, the sun broke forth upon an astounding tableau.