“Yes—­my son”

A wild thrill ran through the boy’s veins, stopping breath and pulse for a second.  Then the hot blood rushed stinging into his face; he threw one arm around the drooping figure in the saddle, and, controlling the bridle with a grip of steel, started the horse off across the field.

All around them the dry soil was bursting into little dusty fountains where the bullets were striking; ahead, dark smoke hung heavily.  Farther on some blue-capped soldiers shouted to them from their shallow rifle pits.

Farther on still they passed an entire battalion of regular infantry, calmly seated on the grass in line of battle; and behind these troops Berkley saw a stretcher on the grass and two men of the hospital corps squatted beside it, chewing grass stems.

They came readily enough when they learned the name and rank of the wounded officer.  Berkley, almost exhausted, walked beside the stretcher, leading the horse and looking down at the stricken man who lay with eyes closed and clothing disordered where a hasty search for the wound had disclosed the small round blue hole just over the seat of the liver.

They turned into a road which had been terribly cut up by the wheels of artillery.  It was already thronged with the debris of the battle, skulkers, wounded men hobbling, pallid malingerers edging their furtive way out of fire.  Then ahead arose a terrible clamour, the wailing of wounded, frightened cries, the angry shouts of cavalrymen, where a Provost Guard of the 20th Dragoons was riding, recklessly into the fugitives, roughly sorting the goats from the sheep, and keeping the way clear for the ambulances now arriving along a cross-road at a gallop.

Berkley heard his name called out, and, looking up, saw Casson, astride a huge horse, signalling him eagerly from his saddle.

“Who in hell have you got there?” he asked, pushing his horse up to the litter.  “By God, it’s Colonel Arran,” he added in a modified voice.  “Is he very bad, Berkley?”

“I don’t know.  Can’t you stop one of those ambulances, Jack?  I want to get him to the surgeons as soon as possible——­”

“You bet!” said Casson, wheeling his horse and displaying the new chevrons of a sergeant.  “Hey, you black offspring of a yellow whippet!” he bellowed to a driver, “back out there and be damn quick about it!” And he leaned from his saddle, and seizing the leaders by the head, swung them around with a volley of profanity.  Then, grinning amiably at Berkley, he motioned the stretcher bearers forward and sat on his horse, garrulously superintending the transfer of the injured man.