Behind came the wagons,
lurching up the slope, and the blood surged to the brave young faces as
the night wind smote them and fanned into brightness the crimson smear
on the horizon. They were English lads of the stock that had furnished
their nation's fighting line, and not infrequently counted no sacrifice
too great that brought their colors home first on the racing turf.
Still, careless to the verge of irresponsibility as they were in most
affairs that did not touch their pride, the man who rode with red spurs
and Dane next behind him, a clear length before the first of them,
asked no better allies in what was to be done.
Then the line drew out as the pace began to tell, though the rearmost
rode grimly, knowing the risks the leaders ran, and that the chance of
being first to meet the fire might yet fall to them. There was not one
among them who would not have killed his best horse for that honor, and
for further incentive the Colonel's niece, in streaming habit, flitted
in front of them. She had come up from behind them, and passed them on
a rise, for Barrington disdained to breed horses for dollars alone, and
there was blood well known on the English turf in the beast she rode.
By and by, a straggling birch bluff rose blackly across their way, but
nobody swung wide. Swaying low while the branches smote them, they
went through, the twigs crackling under foot, and here and there the
red drops trickling down a flushed, scarred face, for the slanting rent
of a birch bough cuts like a knife.
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