“That humming noise.”

“Oh, that?  Prussian bullets.  Ah, by-the-by, it is a compliment to your uniform, monsieur; they take you for some one of importance.  Well, as I was observing”—­

“Your explanation is sufficient, colonel; let us get out of this.  Ha, ha! you are a cool hand, colonel, I must say.  But your battery is a warm place enough:  I shall report it so at headquarters.”

The grim colonel relaxed.

“Captain,” said he politely, “you shall not have ridden to my post in vain.  Will you lend me your horse for ten minutes?”

“Certainly; and I will inspect your trenches meantime.”

“Do so; oblige me by avoiding that angle; it is exposed, and the enemy have got the range to an inch.”

Colonel Dujardin slipped into his quarters; off with his half-dress jacket and his dirty boots, and presently out he came full fig, glittering brighter than the other, with one French and two foreign orders shining on his breast, mounted the aide-de-camp’s horse, and away full pelt.

Admitted, after some delay, into the generalissimo’s tent, Dujardin found the old gentleman surrounded by his staff and wroth:  nor was the danger to which he had been exposed his sole cause of ire.

The shot had burst through his canvas, struck a table on which was a large inkstand, and had squirted the whole contents over the despatches he was writing for Paris.

Now this old gentleman prided himself upon the neatness of his despatches:  a blot on his paper darkened his soul.

Colonel Dujardin expressed his profound regret.  The commander, however, continued to remonstrate.  “I have a great deal of writing to do,” said he, “as you must be aware; and, when I am writing, I expect to be quiet.”

Colonel Dujardin assented respectfully to the justice of this.  He then explained at full length why he could not bring a gun in the battery to silence “Long Tom,” and quietly asked to be permitted to run a gun out of the trenches, and take a shot at the offender.

“It is a point-blank distance, and I have a new gun, with which a man ought to be able to hit his own ball at three hundred yards.”

The commander hesitated.

“I cannot have the men exposed.”

“I engage not to lose a man—­except him who fires the gun.  He must take his chance.”

“Well, colonel, it must be done by volunteers.  The men must not be ordered out on such a service as that.”

Colonel Dujardin bowed, and retired.

“Volunteers to go out of the trenches!” cried Sergeant La Croix, in a stentorian voice, standing erect as a poker, and swelling with importance.

There were fifty offers in less than as many seconds.

“Only twelve allowed to go,” said the sergeant; “and I am one,” added he, adroitly inserting himself.

A gun was taken down, placed on a carriage, and posted near Death’s Alley, but out of the line of fire.