The tired and thirsty souls are alert in an instant, and away go the Heavy Dragoons at a walk until the hill is breasted. Then at a trot, a canter, a gallop, a charge. For the masses of the enemy are all huddled in disorderly crowds away there in the pass, and it needs but one decisive blow to smite them into utter rout and scatter them like chaff. Then was an hour when the fate of a great campaign lay in the balance; and because that hour was not chosen England had to pour out her blood and her treasure in one mingled torrent for a year or two. For as the charging regiment was in amongst the lingerers of the retreat, the pursuit was called away. The keener spirits had naturally ridden furthest, and there was no man there that day who was keener than Polson Jervase. When the bugles rang out the ‘Retire,’ he would, had he been in command, have risked a plagiarism of Nelson, with a glass at the blind eye, and would have failed to recognise the recalling signal. But he was a unit, and a private unit at that. And he was already half emmeshed amidst the edges of the flying crowd, and actually at their mercy, if any of the fugitives had found so much as a sheep’s heart to awake within him. So he turned and galloped back, and since he had been one of the first in the advance, he was naturally one of the last to retreat. There had been a rare burst of a downhill mile or two, and his horse, unfed and unwatered within the last twelve hours, was in need of mercy. He rode the poor beast tenderly, caressing him as he went, and looking up he was aware of an officer in staff uniform, who was rounding up the stragglers. There are few things that appeal more directly from man to man than the sympathy of the sound and rooted sportsman. Polson had followed the hounds almost from the time when he could first bestride a pony; and the sight of a clean workman across bad country was like wine to him at any time. This fellow in the cocked hat and waving plumes was splendidly mounted, to be sure, but the going was as treacherous and difficult as it well could be, and the horseman rode with an address and daring which were delightful to look at. He waved an urgent hand from three or four hundred yards away towards Polson, who responded by a gesture indicating the route he meant to take. The last straggler having been thus rounded up, the officer turned and reined in his charger for a final look at the retreating forces of the enemy; and somewhere from the black middle mass of them down in the shadow of the valley there came a flash and a volley of smoke, and almost directly afterwards an echoing boom of sound. The charger reared, drooped upon his haunches, and fell over; the rider dropped with admirable agility on one side and avoided the threatened mischief of the fall. There were scores of unmastered steeds racing about the valley and the upward slopes; Polson rode for the nearest, and, having secured it, cantered up to the place where the