“Stopped their fire!”
“That they did, and cheered him heartily. How could they help it! he was the only man on that rude glacis, torn and gullied with shot and shell.”
“Oh, the noble fellow!” burst out the girl, as her eyes ran over.
“Is n't he a noble fellow?” said the soldier. “We don't want for brave fellows in that army; but show me one will do what he did. It was a shot carried off this,” said he, touching the empty sleeve of his jacket; “and I said something—I must have been wandering in my mind—about a ring my mother had given me, and it was on the finger of that poor hand. Well, what does Jack Kellett do, while the surgeon was dressing my wound, but set off to the place where I was shot down, and, under all that hailstorm of Minié-balls, brought in the limb. That's the ring,—he rescued it at the risk of his life. There's more than courage in that; there's a goodness and kindness of heart worth more than all the bravery that ever stormed a battery.”
“And yet he left me,—deserted his poor father!” cried old Kellett, sobbing.
“If he did so, it was to make a name for you that the first man in England might be proud of.”
“To go off and list as a common soldier!” said Kellett; and then, suddenly shocked at his own rudeness, and shamed by the deep blush on Sybella's face, he stammered out, “Not but I've known many a man with good blood in his veins,—many a born gentleman,—serving in the ranks.”
“Well, I hope so,” said the other, laughing with a hearty good-nature. “It's not exactly so common a thing with us as with our worthy allies the French; but every now and then you'll find a firelock in the hands that once held a double-barrelled Manton, and maybe knocked over the pheasants in his own father's preserves.”