For a great while he slept placidly. An idler passed, saw the bird in the cage and the sleeper on the straw, looked up and down the tracks and then walked nonchalantly away swinging the thrush's cage from his own forefinger. An hour later the Duke began to dream. A far-away rumble filled his ears, then there was a prolonged trumpet blast rising and falling like the notes of the five-foot horns which had sounded at the head of his column of horse when he had been a youngster and a cavalryman in the Imperial Guard. Then there was a rushing sound like that of wind in the trees and behold! he was a mounted trooper in iron helmet and jangling plate armour, riding through the forest with a broad sabre on one hip, a quiver of arrows on the other and a bow across his back. He was not alone. Through the dim light and between the trunks of the pines he could see scores of others clad as he was and accoutred with the weapons of their forefathers. The roar of a big drum was close at hand now and the blare of the trumpets immediately ahead of him thrilled him and made his horse dance under him. There was light. ahead through the forest, the horsemen dashed forward carrying him with them and in an instant they were out upon the open brow of a hill, thousands of them, all bent forward in their saddles and brilliant in metal plates. Below them in a valley, across a long smooth descent of green sward a file of men and animals, cavalry and infantry and baggage carts piled high with sacks of grain, was making confused and frantic efforts to bring itself into order and present a fighting front. A roar went up from the the Manchu cavalryman and the charge began. He unslung his bow and when the others began to shoot he too loosed his arrows, noting with satisfaction that every long shaft was lost in the mass of struggling men and animals below. Then there came an answering flight and a@ rider before him crumpled and fell. Another volley at short range and the sabres were out. His horse collapsed under him, he rolled on the ground and got to his knees just in time to ward a blow from a great two handed sword that would have split him lengthwise if it had landed fairly on his shoulder. The big blade went up again in a flash of light and with his own sabre he made a vicious cut at the swordsman's legs, and then—he awoke.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.