In the Guardianship of God. Flora Annie Webster Steel
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Break! What more likely? A weak company, full of recruits, a company with its officers shot down, and before them a task for veterans--for that indifference to whizzing bullets which only custom brings. Major Griffiths, as he ran forward, saw all this, saw also the ominous waver. God! would he be in time to check it--to get ahead? that was what was wanted, some one ahead--no more than that--some one ahead!
There was some one. A tall figure ahead of the wavering boys.
"Come on! come on, my lads! follow me!" rang out a confident voice, and the Major, as he ran, half-blinded by the mists of his own haste, felt it was as a voice from heaven.
"Come on! come on!--give it 'em straight. Hip, hip, hurray!"
An answering cheer broke from the boys behind, and with a rush the weakest company in the regiment followed some one to victory.
* * * * *
"I don't understand what the dickens it means," said the Colonel almost fretfully that same evening, when, safe over the pass, the little force was bivouacking in a willow-set valley on the other side of the hills. Before it lay what it had come to gain, behind it danger past. "Some one in my regiment," he went on, "does a deuced plucky thing--between ourselves, saves the position: I want naturally to find out who it was, and am met by a cock and bull story about some one's ghost. What the devil does it mean, Major?"
The Major shook his head. "I couldn't swear to the figure, sir, though it reminded me a bit--but that's impossible. However, as I have by your orders to ride back to the top, sir, and see what can be done to hold it, I'll dip over a bit to where the rush was made, and see if there is any clue."
He had not to go so far. For in one of those tiny hollows in the level plateau of pass, whence the snow melts early, leaving a carpet of blue forget-me-nots and alpine primroses behind it, he, Sergeant Jones, and the small party going to make security still more secure, came upon Peroo, the water-carrier, trying to perform a tearful travesty of the burial service over the body of George Afford.
It was dressed in Sergeant Jones' tunic and Major Griffiths' putties, but the Sergeant knelt down beside it, and smoothed the stripes upon the cuff with a half-mechanical, half-caressing touch, and the Major interrupted Peroo's protestations with an odd tremor in his voice.
"What the devil does it matter," he said sharply, "what he took besides the pass? Stand aside, man; this is my work, not yours. Sergeant! form up your men for the salute--ball cartridge."
The Major's recollection of the service for the burial of the dead was not accurate, but it was comprehensive. So he committed the mortal remains of his brother soldier to the dust, confessing confusedly that there is a natural body and a spiritual body--a man that is of the earth earthy, and one that is the Lord from heaven. So following on a petition to be saved from temptation and delivered from evil, the salute startled the echoes, and they left George Afford in the keeping of the pass, and the pass in his keeping. And as the Major rode campwards, he wondered vaguely if some one before the great white throne wore a bad-character suit, or whether wisdom understood the plea, "I've had a very chequered life, I have indeed."
But Peroo had no such thoughts; needed no such excuse. It was sufficient for him that the Huzoor had once been the protector of the poor.
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