“He’s shot through and through,” is his verdict, presently.  “No power can save him.  Who is he?”

“About the worst and most dangerous ringleader of riot this town has known, sir,” is the answer of one of the police officials.  “No one knew where he came from either—­or his real name.”

And then in his dying agony the fallen demagogue turns, and the other side of his twitching face comes uppermost.  Even through the thin, grizzly beard there is plainly seen an ugly, jagged scar stretching from ear to chin.

“This isn’t his first row by any manner of means, if it is his last,” says a sergeant of police.  “Look at that!  Who shot him, anyhow?”

“I did,” is the cool, prompt answer, and Sergeant Feeny raises his hand to his carried carbine and stands attention as he sees the surgeon kneeling there.  “I did, and just in the nick of time.  He had drawn a bead on our lieutenant; but even if he hadn’t I’d have downed him, and so would any man in that company yonder.”  And Feeny points to where “C” troop stands resting after its charge.

“You knew him, then?”

“Knew him instantly, as a deserter, thafe, highway-man, and murderer,—­knew him as Private Bland in Arizona, and would know him anywhere by that scar.”

A policeman bends and wrenches a loaded revolver from the clutching, quivering fingers just as Wing comes striding back and shoulders a way into the group.

“Is he badly hurt, doctor?  That was an awful whack.”

“It isn’t the lieutenant, sir,” says Feeny, respectfully, but with strange significance in his tone as he draws a policeman aside.  “Look!”

And Wing, bending over, gives one glance into the dying face, then covers his eyes with his hands and turns blindly, dizzily, away.

That evening a host of citizens are gathered about the bivouac of the battalion at the water-works while the trumpets are sounding tattoo.  A few squares away the familiar notes come floating in through the open windows of a room where Jim Drummond is lying on a most comfortable sofa, which has been rolled close to the casement, where every whiff of the cool lake breeze can fan his face, and where, glancing languidly around, he contrasts the luxury of these surroundings with the rude simplicity of the life he has lived and loved so many years.  Gray-haired George Harvey, kindly Mrs. Stone, his sister, blissful, beautiful Fanny Wing with burly baby Harvey in her arms and her proud, soldierly husband by her side, and a tall, lovely, silent girl have all been there to minister to his needs and bid him thrice welcome and make him feel that here, if anywhere on earth, he is at home.  And here the battalion surgeon and the family physician unite in declaring he must remain until released by their order, and here for three days and nights he is nursed and petted and made so much of that he is unable to recognize himself, and here sister Puss comes to cry over and kiss and