But he did more than work his shoulders. He threw a single furtive,
wavering glance backwards; and Lieutenant Sutch was startled, and indeed
more than startled,--he was pained. For this after all was Muriel
Graham's boy.
The look was too familiar a one to Sutch. He had seen it on the faces of
recruits during their first experience of a battle too often for him to
misunderstand it. And one picture in particular rose before his
mind,--an advancing square at Inkermann, and a tall big soldier rushing
forward from the line in the eagerness of his attack, and then stopping
suddenly as though he suddenly understood that he was alone, and had to
meet alone the charge of a mounted Cossack. Sutch remembered very
clearly the fatal wavering glance which the big soldier had thrown
backward toward his companions,--a glance accompanied by a queer sickly
smile. He remembered too, with equal vividness, its consequence. For
though the soldier carried a loaded musket and a bayonet locked to the
muzzle, he had without an effort of self-defence received the Cossack's
lance-thrust in his throat.
Sutch glanced hurriedly about the table, afraid that General Feversham,
or that some one of his guests, should have remarked the same look and
the same smile upon Harry's face.
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