A great groan rose from the floor and the galleries; the band played on wildly, losing its perfect tempo and each musician playing for himself, but still playing as a band should play on in terrible crises.  The line of riders was sharply checked, the perfectly trained horses coming to a dead stop within ten seconds.  In the C. O.’s box the chaplain was on his feet, his hands clasped in silent supplication; Mrs. Fortescue, braver than a brave soldier, put her arm about her husband’s neck, as Colonel Fortescue swayed about in his seat like a drunken man.  Amid the blare of the band and the riders and chargers almost upon the struggling horse and motionless girl, lying on the tanbark, Broussard, coolly, as if he were on the parade ground, lifted Gamechick by the bridle, gave him a touch of the spur, and the next moment cleared both mare and girl, with twenty inches between Gamechick’s iron-shod hind hoofs and Anita’s beautiful blonde head.

[Illustration:  Broussard, lifted Gamechick by the bridle and the next moment cleared both mare and girl.]

It had all passed in twenty seconds by the clock, but to those who watched it seemed a long hour of agony.  The moment the leap was made, Anita sprang to her feet and Broussard was on the tanbark.  Wild cheering almost drowned the crash of the band; some of the women were weeping and others laughing hysterically, the men cheering like madmen.  Broussard smilingly picked up Anita’s cavalry cap, which had fallen on the tanbark, brushed it and put it on Anita’s pretty head; some words, unheard by others, passed between them.  The mare then lay perfectly quiet.  Broussard, amid the roar of cheers and shouts and furious handclapping and music, got the mare on her feet.  She stood trembling, frightened and ashamed; Anita patted her neck gently and rubbed her nose reassuringly.  Then Broussard, taking the girl’s slender waist between his hands, swung her into her saddle, himself mounted, and, the riders falling in behind, it was as if Tragedy had not showed her awful visage for one fearful moment.

All the cheering and clapping and weeping and laughing and shouting that had gone before were nothing to what followed after, while the band played “For He Is a Jolly Good Fellow,” and everybody who could sing, or thought he could sing, joined in the refrain.  Colonel Fortescue, whiter than death, sat straight up in his place.  Mrs. Fortescue whispered in his ear: 

“Be brave,—­brave as you were in battle.”

Colonel Fortescue had been in battle, but the screaming shells and crash of machine guns brought with them no such wild and shivering terror as when he saw Gamechick’s forefeet in the air over Anita, lying on the tanbark.