“I give you the talisman, and I give you my love.”
He bent down and kissed her, then without a word went away into the moonlit night on his way to battle, and perhaps—death.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
A MODERN THERMOPYLÆ.
In the gap say fifty fighters waiting for the coming shock,
Guns and sabres, pikes and bayonets holding tight,
And two hundred stormers dashing up, like surges on a rock,
With a grim determination for their foes’ extermination
In the fight.
Clash of weapons, cannon’s thunder, and the rifle’s deadly crack,
Mingle fiercely with the shrieking of the wounded in their pain,