While this frightful battle raged, Lucius stood some little distance off, in an agony of apprehension for the safety of his friend. At the first clank of the meeting steel he had risen to his feet, and strained his eager eyes to see what was about to happen; but, even though he drew a little nearer, he could distinguish nothing clearly. Only in the dusk a pair of tall forms dashed from right to left, or bounded from side to side, meeting, recoiling, and meeting again. But if he could not see, he could hear; and at each jarring clank of the clashing bayonets his heart leaped, and his hair rose on his head, for he could not believe that Ephraim would win the fight. Oh for a gun! he thought, as he ran wildly backwards and forwards, groping along the ground, in the hope that he might come upon some straggler’s discarded piece. All at once he heard shouts and the noise of rushing footsteps. From the river bank, from the woods, from the pickets behind him—from every direction—men were hastening to the scene of the conflict. Then that furious cry from the Grizzly, and the dull crash as the sergeant fell under his powerful stroke. Finally silence for a little space around the combatants. Lucius did not know which had fallen: he could just see that one was down—that was all—and his fears told him that it must be Grizzly. A dull, apathetic feeling stole over him. He did not try to move. He knew that in a few minutes more he must be a prisoner, and he did not care. A mournful voice seemed to chant in his ears, slow and solemn as a dirge, ‘The Grizzly is dead! the Grizzly is dead!’ And all concern for himself vanished in the presence of this overwhelming sorrow. Then, as he stood, the sound of the well-known voice thrilled him like an electric shock, jarring his whole frame with the one pregnant monosyllable, ‘Run!’ And, without stopping to question or to reason, he turned his face and fled. Fled at first madly, unthinkingly, right in the teeth of the advancing enemy. He had no knowledge of Ephraim’s whereabouts—whether he was ahead of him or behind him. He was alive—that was just enough then—and on went Lucius like the wind. When two people are running at top speed in the same line, but from opposite extremes, it stands to reason that, sooner or later, they will meet. And this is exactly what happened now. They met, Lucius and the leading man of the racing sentinels—met with a crash, like two charging footballers—with the result that both went down in a heap upon the ground. Lucius was the first to recover himself, and the shock seemed to clear his brain, so that he realised sharply what he was doing in thus throwing himself into the arms of his foes. He was a slow thinker as a rule—or, rather, he seldom troubled himself to think at all; but now his plans were formed upon the instant, such a stimulus is necessity.