sky the profile of the horse was cut with the sharpness of a cameo; it looked across the heights of air to the confronting cliffs beyond.  The face of the rider, turned slightly away, showed only an outline of temple and beard; he was looking downward to the bottom of the valley.  Magnified by its lift against the sky and by the soldier’s testifying sense of the formidableness of a near enemy the group appeared of heroic, almost colossal, size.

For an instant Druse had a strange, half-defined feeling that he had slept to the end of the war and was looking upon a noble work of art reared upon that eminence to commemorate the deeds of an heroic past of which he had been an inglorious part.  The feeling was dispelled by a slight movement of the group:  the horse, without moving its feet, had drawn its body slightly backward from the verge; the man remained immobile as before.  Broad awake and keenly alive to the significance of the situation, Druse now brought the butt of his rifle against his cheek by cautiously pushing the barrel forward through the bushes, cocked the piece, and glancing through the sights covered a vital spot of the horseman’s breast.  A touch upon the trigger and all would have been well with Carter Druse.  At that instant the horseman turned his head and looked in the direction of his concealed foeman—­seemed to look into his very face, into his eyes, into his brave, compassionate heart.

Is it then so terrible to kill an enemy in war—­an enemy who has surprised a secret vital to the safety of one’s self and comrades—­an enemy more formidable for his knowledge than all his army for its numbers?  Carter Druse grew pale; he shook in every limb, turned faint, and saw the statuesque group before him as black figures, rising, falling, moving unsteadily in arcs of circles in a fiery sky.  His hand fell away from his weapon, his head slowly dropped until his face rested on the leaves in which he lay.  This courageous gentleman and hardy soldier was near swooning from intensity of emotion.

It was not for long; in another moment his face was raised from earth, his hands resumed their places on the rifle, his forefinger sought the trigger; mind, heart, and eyes were clear, conscience and reason sound.  He could not hope to capture that enemy; to alarm him would but send him dashing to his camp with his fatal news.  The duty of the soldier was plain:  the man must be shot dead from ambush—­without warning, without a moment’s spiritual preparation, with never so much as an unspoken prayer, he must be sent to his account.  But no—­there is a hope; he may have discovered nothing—­perhaps he is but admiring the sublimity of the landscape.  If permitted, he may turn and ride carelessly away in the direction whence he came.  Surely it will be possible to judge at the instant of his withdrawing whether he knows.  It may well be that his fixity of attention—­Druse turned his head and looked through the deeps of air downward, as from the surface to the bottom of a translucent sea.  He saw creeping across the green meadow a sinuous line of figures of men and horses—­some foolish commander was permitting the soldiers of his escort to water their beasts in the open, in plain view from a dozen summits!