The Czar Alexander had been present, watching the varied issues of every fight and assault. The sappers had built for him a kind of outlook on a little hill beyond the line of fire, where he could see far away on all sides. A large tent was standing behind, supplied with food and wine, where his suite made merry; but the poor, worn, anxious Czar could not eat, could not bide in his safe tower, but would go wandering round among the gunners and the guns. It was his fête-day when the great September battle was being fought. There he stood alone on his little balcony, under the lowering sky of an autumn day, gazing through his glass at the efforts of his soldiers to storm the Gravitza redoubt. All the afternoon assault had followed assault in vain, and now the last desperate effort, the forlorn hope, was being pushed to the front. The pale, drawn face on the balcony was now quivering with agonized sorrow; the tall figure was bent and bowed, and seemed to wince under the lash of some destroying angel. With awful losses the Russian battalions staggered and struggled up the slopes slippery with their comrades’ blood. “See, sire, they have entered the redoubt; it is carried at last!” Hardly has the Czar time to smile and breathe a prayer of gratitude when from a second redoubt higher up a terrible fire is turned on the Russians, and they are swept out of the place they had so hardly won. There was one Russian officer who seemed to have a charmed life. He was the bravest of the brave, was beloved by his men, and did marvels of heroic feats--Skobeleff. On a day of battle Skobeleff always wore a white frock-coat, with all his decorations. Seeing the battalions coming back from the Gravitza in disorderly route, the tall white figure on the white horse dashed at full speed down the slope, passed the linesmen, who gave their loved chief a great cheer as he galloped by, caught up the riflemen who were advancing in support, and swept them on at the double. Men sprang to their feet and rapturously cheered the white-clad leader. He reached the wavering beaten mass, pointed upwards with his sword, and imparted to daunted hearts some of his own courage and enthusiasm. They turned with him and tried yet once more. Then the white horse went down. The glass trembled in the hands of Alexander. “He is down!” “No, sire; he rises--he mounts again! See, they are over and into the Turkish entrenchments!” What a medley of sights and sounds--flame and smoke and shouts and screams! But the Russians were for the present masters of the redoubt. In the evening Skobeleff rode back without a scratch on him, though his white coat was covered with blood and froth and mud. His horse--his last white charger--was shot dead on the edge of the ditch; his blade was broken off short by the hilt. Every man of his staff was killed or wounded, except Kuropatkin.