"Here, Nagler!"
The Captain whistled, the other man advised indifferently:
"Let the brute alone—perhaps the rabbit's a French one!" He added, "It would be amusing to read a dog's Impressions of the campaign. What time is it? 'Ten!' Very well, I shall go and turn in. You'll do the same thing if you'll take my advice."
The Captain grunted assent, and the two officers clanked away together, while P. C. Breagh noiselessly collected his venerable waterproof, his water-bottle, and knapsack, and departed in search of a more distant sleeping-place.
But when he found it in a dry ditch a quarter-of-a-mile below the Mounted Artillery bivouac, and stretched himself out to sleep, he could not.... His head rang with the news that would presently thrill the civilized world.
First blood to Germany.... Did the Doctor know? ...
That genial little gentleman had prophesied accurately. The "meaty bone" of early and accurate information had fallen to the "tyke at the tail of the Army Corps." While the prophet, delayed by pumped-out horses and recalcitrant grooms, at the Lion Inn of Neustadt, knew no more than that the heir to the Prussian Crown was over the frontier, and was reported to have taken Wissembourg from the French.
That dry ditch accommodated a complacent lodger. His misgivings banished by one stroke of fortune, P. C. Breagh brooded sleeplessly over the Koh-i-noor that had fallen to him.... Though, to hold such a jewel and know oneself impotent to use it, that was the verjuice mingled in the cup of bliss.
Without funds for telegraphing—an Editor to print one's letters—and a public ready to read, what was the use of information? Stop! What was that the more authoritative of the two officers had said?—the one who had given the news to the other man? "It would be amusing to read a dog's impressions of the campaign! ..."
Would it? Such a dog, perhaps, as the mongrel that had joined the green-jacketed Saxon infantry regiment at Bingen. The cur the compassionate soldier had christened "Bang." Lying on his back, pillowed on his knapsack, staring at the waning moon, the boy pondered. Suppose one wrote one's letters to Knewbit in the assumed character of Bang?