answer the volley, and one of them springs from his saddle, seizes
Derwent, and plunges a knife into his throat. The rebel falls. His blood
pools around him. The British are successful, for two of the young men
are bound and two of them have fallen, and there is a cheer of victory,
but the trooper with the knife in his hand does not raise his voice. He
bends above the farmer as still as one dead, until his captain claps him
on the shoulder. As he rises, the prisoners start in wonder, for the face
they see in the lantern-light is that of their brother, yet strange in
its haggardness and its smear of blood on the cheek. The girl runs from
her hiding-place with a cry, but stands in horror when her foot touches
the gory pool in the road. The trooper opens his coat and offers her a
locket. It contains her picture, and he has worn it above his heart for a
year, but she lets it fall and sinks down, moaning. The soldier tears off
his red coat, tramples it in the dust, then vaulting to his saddle he
plunges into the river, fords it, and crashes through the underbrush on
the other side. In a few minutes he has reached the summit of a rock that
rises nearly a hundred feet above the stream. The horse halts at the
edge, but on a fierce stab of the spur into his flank he takes the leap.
With a despairing yell the traitor and parricide goes into eternity.




THE BLACKSMITH AT BRANDYWINE

Terrible in the field at Brandywine was the figure of a man armed only
with a hammer, who plunged into the ranks of the enemy, heedless of his
own life, yet seeming to escape their shots and sabre cuts by magic, and
with Thor strokes beat them to the earth. But yesterday war had been to
him a distant rumor, a thing as far from his cottage at Dilworth as if it