INSULT AND CHALLENGE Now, because there is still so much to tell, and so little time and space to tell it in, I must go forward rapidly.

In these dull times of grouting peace, when men become like penned pigs, waking up only at feeding-time, they have no knowledge of how swiftly life went when every day brought a new living friend or a new dead enemy, when love and hate awakened fresh and fresh with each morrow's sun--and when I was young.
Perhaps that last is the true reason.

But when the Baltic norther snorts without, and mine ancient thigh-wound twinges down where my hand rests, naturally I have no better resource than to fall to the goose-quill.

And lo! long ere I am done with the first page, and have the ink no more than half-way to the roots of my hair, I am again in the midst of the ringing hoofs of the foray.

I hear the merry dinting of steel on steel; the sullen _chug-chug_ of the wheels of Foul Peg, the Margrave's great cannon, which more than once he lent our Prince; the oaths of the men-at-arms shouldering her up, apostrophizing most indecently her fat haunches, and the next moment getting tossed aside like ninepins by her unexpected lurches.