attention?"

He stood up, for he was an excitable and voluble Colonel, and he loved
oration as a cat does milk. With a knife he drew a picture of the locale
on the table cloth. "Here I was riding on my sorrel, all my noble
fellows behind, the fife and drums going as at Louisburg--that day!
Martial ardour united to manliness and local pride--follow me? Here we
were, Red Ravine left, stump fences and waving fields of grain right.
From military point of view, bad position--ravine, stump fence, brave
soldiers in the middle, food for powder--catch it?--see?"

He emptied his glass, drew a long breath, and again began, the carving-
knife cutting a rhetorical path before him. "I was engaged upon the
military problem--demonstration in force, no scouts ahead, no rearguard,
ravine on the right, stump fence on the left, red coats, fife-and-drum
band, concealed enemy--follow me? Observant mind always sees problems
everywhere--unresting military genius accustoms intelligence to all
possible contingencies--'stand what I mean?"

The Seigneur took a pinch of snuff, and the Cure, whose mind was
benevolent, listened with the gravest interest.

"At the juncture when, in my mind's eye, I saw my gallant fellows
enfiladed with a terrible fire, caught in a trap, and I, despairing,
spurring on to die at their headhave I your attention?--just at that
moment there appeared between the ravine and the road ahead a man. He
wore an eye-glass; he seemed an unconcerned spectator of our movements
--so does the untrained, unthinking eye look out upon destiny! Not far
away was a wagon, in it a man. Wagon bisecting our course from a cross-
road--"