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And with it all a great huht His life had been careless and gay; and the noble co He had lived within the confines of a little aristocracy of birth and wealth and talent, and the great ed by the winds of God had seeuless now in this solemn hour; the truth had been his no more than his crude opponent's! Had he his days to live over again he would look on the world with different eyes No man any more should call him a dreamer It pleased him to think that, half-hearted and sceptical as he had been, a hu for one of the catchwords of the crowd He had returned to the ho, unforht up by kind fate to the place of the wise and the heroic

Suddenly on his thoughts there broke in a dull tread of ravel He broke into the cold sweat of tense nerves, and waited, half hidden, with his rifle ready Then caht of dull lanterns which showed a thin, endless column beneath the rock walls They advanced onderful quietness, the sound of feet broken only by a soft word of command He calculated the distance--noas three hundred yards, noo, now a bare eighty At fifty his rifle flew to his shoulder and he fired His nerves were bad, for one bullet clicked on the rock, while the second took the dust a yard before the enemy's feet Instantly there was a halt and the sound of speech

The failure had steadied him The second pair of shots killed their men He heard the quick cry of pain and shivered He was new to this work and the cry hurt hiain there was a cry and a fall Then he heard a word of co in the side of the nullah Eye and ear were marvelously acute at the moment, for he picked out the scouts and killed them Then he loaded his rifles and waited

He saw a ht not five yards below him He fired and the reat spattering of earth showed his whereabouts Noas the time for keen eye and steady arm The enemy had halted thirty yards off and beneath the slope there was a patch of darkness He kept one eye on this, for it ht contain a ht which fell across the floor of the gully When a man crept past this he shot, and he rarely failed