Petheridge Jukesbury caught her as she fell, and began to blubber like
a whipped schoolboy as he stood there holding her in his arms.
But Billy was not dead. There was still a feeble, jerky fluttering in
his big chest when Colonel Hugonin found him. His heart still moved,
but under the Colonel's hand its stirrings were vague and aimless as
those of a captive butterfly.
The Colonel had seen dead men and dying men before this; and as he
bent over the boy he loved he gave a convulsive sob, and afterward
buried his face in his hands.