"Let me go on!" cried the rider, in a voice so full of agony that it was almost a screech. "I have dispatches."
They laid him down on the grass by the edge of the road, grass scorched and crispened by the explosion.
The dispatch-rider looked up and saw the major, who had hurried to the scene.
"Dispatches! They are life or death for France!" he gasped.
The major stooped down and the wounded man guttered out a few sentences, while feebly trying to reach the paper he bore.
Life was ebbing fast, but though the man's sufferings must have been intense, he said no word of himself. Only he cried out again.
"I have dispatches!"
Then the major, in order that the gallant soldier should not die in the despair of an unaccomplished trust, answered, in a firm tone,
"They shall be delivered. I promise it."