"'We were standing foot to foot, and giving shoot for shoot; Hot and strong went our volleys at the blue; We knelt, but not for grace, and the fuse lit up the face Of the gunner, as the round shot by us flew.'" Endicott smiles. "But it was a good battle-cry, Allen. I remember your reciting verses at Cambridge in your college-days, but it was generally 'A sonnet to your mistress' eyebrows,'--some fair one who had conquered your heart for a week perhaps." Dorris is not to be diverted from the absorbing topic of ball and bayonet, and returns to the charge. "But how did you feel when you were wounded?" she asks again. "Oh, I did not know where I was hit. In the midst of the fight I wondered why I couldn't move my left foot; it was like lead in the stirrup, and looking down I saw the mark where the ball had struck, and the blood following it. It was a little quieter then, so I got the sergeant near me to clip, and ease my foot a little. But you should have seen L'Estrange: he was wounded then; and when the order came to charge he rushed on, waving his sword, with the blood dripping from his arm. How the men rushed after him! And when he came back supporting another poor fellow, and insisting on his being cared for first, you should have heard the men cheer him." "And you, Allen," suggests Endicott,--"how did you get on with that wound of yours?" "Well, I was rather faint by the time we were ready to go back to camp; but somebody set me straight in the saddle when I reeled, and I managed to get back all right." "But where was the surgeon all the while?" "To tell the truth, I was so much better off than most of the poor fellows, Keith, I made him help the rest. That was all." "So you took the chance of enjoying a British surgeon's tender mercies, for the sake of men, who, perhaps, could not live anyway. Allen, you always were a good-natured Don Quixote." Allen laughed as if he saw something beneath the words which excused their lightness, but Dorris frowned, as she looked admiringly at the manly fellow so ready to see his comrade's unselfish bravery, so unconscious of his own. She often saw the wounded soldier leaning on Endicott's arm, and their words seemed grave and earnest, while Endicott's face seemed for a time to lose its cynical sneers. And then Dorris had relented, only to harden again at some irreverent words of this incorrigible Keith. A sharp retort was on her lip now, but she restrained it as L'Estrange once more joined the group, and the talk drifted into quieter channels, the young soldiers a little graver than usual. At last L'Estrange spoke with tender regret of the peaceful scenes he was to leave so soon behind him, and Endicott answered:-- "Yes; think of all the drives and walks and talks, and all the charms of civilized life you forego, and then of the camp-life and forced marches, and chances of broken arms and legs, which you endure, and all for that one sweet virtue,--patriotism."