Over the snowy hills they rushed, slipping, falling, and scrambling to their feet again; swarming up the fence, to be knocked off by well-directed blows; crawling under the fence in hopes of catching an enemy by the legs, and being caught by the heads themselves, or making narrow escapes, leaving behind them locks of hair, and taking away scratches and bruises.
Lieutenant Mullally twisted his ankle, and sank down groaning behind an embankment. Little Willie Bond's cheek was badly cut with a pebbled snow-ball. A dozen other boys were more or less hurt.
The fight grew fast and furious. Neither side stopped to look after its wounded, when small Bond, who had climbed a ladder leaning against a pile of brick, and who was sitting on the topmost round nursing his wounded face, called out, in his shrillest voice,
"Halloo! a flag of truce! H-a-l-l-o-o! a flag of truce is comin'."
"Don't belong to us," shouted the Woods.
"Don't belong to us," shouted the Tins.
"It's only a girl," said Mullally, getting up on one leg; whereupon his captain, spying him, asked in an indignant tone,
"What are you shirkin' for, Lally? They've got ten of our men. Tins to the rescue! Tins to the rescue!" And in his excitement he let his flashing sword fall so suddenly on the head of the warrior next to him that that warrior immediately bit the dust—snow, I should say. At the same moment a scout flying in with the cry, "It's Lady Rags," fell over him at the captain's feet.
"It's Lady Rags," ran through the ranks.
"It's Lady Rags," Lubs informed his soldiers from the ramparts, and deserting the fort, they all joined him on the sidewalk, their prisoners promptly seizing the chance to escape.