The shot had actually driven a splinter of bone out of the sutler into Dard’s temple.
“I am the unluckiest fellow in the army,” remonstrated Dard: and he stamped in a circle.
“Seems to me you are only the second unluckiest this time,” said a young soldier with his mouth full; and, with a certain dry humor, he pointed vaguely over his shoulder with the fork towards the corpse.
The trenches laughed and assented.
This want of sympathy and justice irritated Dard. “You cursed fools!” cried he. “He is gone where we must all go—without any trouble. But look at me. I am always getting barked. Dogs of Prussians! they pick me out among a thousand. I shall have a headache all the afternoon, you see else.”
Some of our heads would never have ached again: but Dard had a good thick skull.
Dard pulled out his spilikin savagely.
“I’ll wrap it up in paper for Jacintha,” said he. “Then that will learn her what a poor soldier has to go through.”
Even this consolation was denied Private Dard.
Corporal Coriolanus Gand, a bit of an infidel from Lyons, who sometimes amused himself with the Breton’s superstition, told him with a grave face, that the splinter belonged not to him, but to the sutler, and, though so small, was doubtless a necessary part of his frame.