Part 35 (1/2)

I was now pretty well ht that old Peter had won, that we had won beyond our wildest drea ould exact the utter on the parapet and waveddefiance Rifle shots cracked out from behind, and I leaped back just in tiesolacis The next was better and crashed on the near parapet, carving a great hole in the rocky kranz This timent of stone, but I felt no pain

Blenkiron seemed to bear a charmed life, for he was smothered in dust, but unhurt He blew the dust away fro

'Sister Anne,' he asked, 'do you see anybody co?'

Then caround

I was determined to break for the open and chance the rifle fire, for if Stuht Blenkiron round thehis cards to the winds, and juize, Sister Anne,' said he 'The gaood as won But for God's sake drop et plugged sure and good'

My one thought was to get cover for the next il was near its end The defences of Erzeru like sand-castles, and it was a proof of the tenseness of my nerves that I seemed to be deaf to the sound Stumm had seen us cross the parapet, and he started to sprinkle all the surroundings of the castrol Blenkiron and I lay like a working-party between the lines caught bya pull on ourselves as best we could Sandy had some kind of cover, but ere on the bare farther slope, and the rifleht have had us at their mercy

But no shots came from them As I looked east, the hillside, which a little before had been held by our enemies, was as eht which for a second ti ofaway beyond the road to the steep slopes, and leaving behind it ates of the South had yielded, and our friends were through theer I didn't give a cent for Stumm's shells I didn't believe he could hit me The fate which had mercifully preserved us for the first taste of victory would see us through to the end

I re the hill to find Sandy But our neas anticipated For down our own side-glen came the same broken tumult of men More; for at their backs, far up at the throat of the pass, I saw horse his cavalry in

Sandy was on his feet, with his lips set and his eye abstracted If his face hadn't been burned black by weather it would have been pale as a dish-clout A iven his life again without being wrenched out of his bearings I thought he didn't understand what had happened, so I beat him on the shoulders

'Man, d'you see?' I cried 'The Cossacks! The Cossacks! God! How they're taking that slope! They're into theun horses!'

A little knoll prevented Stulen, till the first wave of the rout was on the the castrol and its environs while the world was cracking over his head The gun tea the boulders we crawled, Blenkiron as lame as a duck, andat their pickets and sniffing the reat bo cries of a beaten army Before we reached the and gasping in their flight,in the first stages of collapse and death I saw the horses seized by a dozen hands, and a desperate fight for their possession But as we halted there our eyes were fixed on the battery on the road above us, for round it was noeeping the van of the retreat

I had never seen a rout before, when strong men come to the end of their tether and only their broken shadows stue they never find No more had Stu down that hill I was rather hoping that the two of us ht have a final scrap He was a brute and a bully, but, by God! he was a reat roar when he saw the tu at the gun He swung it south and turned it on the fugitives