be ready to go out in the morning, and try once more to get killed."

"I don't see how you and Pennington and I, all three of us, came out of
it alive to-day."

"That question is bothering me, too, Dick. A million bullets were fired
at each of us, not to count thousands of pieces of shell, shrapnel,
canister, grape, and slashes of swords. Take any ratio of percentage
you please and something should have got us. According to every rule of
algebra, not more than one of us three should be alive now. Yet here we
are."

"Maybe your algebra is wrong?"

"Impossible. Algebra is the most exact of all sciences. It does not
admit of error. Both by algebra and by the immutable law of averages at
least two of us are dead."

"But we don't know which two."

"That's true. Nevertheless it's certain that those two, whoever they may
be, are here on borrowed time. What do your wounds amount to, Dick?"

"Nothing, I had forgotten 'em. I've lost a little blood, but what does
it amount to on a day like this, when blood is shed in rivers?"

"That's true. My own skin has been broken, but just barely, four times
by bullets. I've a notion that those bullets were coming straight for
some vital part of me, but seeing who it was, and knowing that such a
noble character ought not to be slain, they turned aside as quickly as