ccess it may, Strasbourg will be held still. I overheard
Colonel Guyon remark that the waters of the Rhine have fallen three
feet since the drought set in, and Regnier replied 'that we must lose no
time, for there will come rain and floods ere long.' Now what could that
mean but the intention to cross over yonder?'

'Cross the Rhine in face of the fort of Kehl!' broke in the corporal.

'The French army have done bolder things before now!' was my reply;
and, whatever the opinion of my comrades, the flattery ranged them on
my side. Perhaps the corporal felt it beneath his dignity to discuss
tactics with an inferior, or perhaps he felt unable to refute the
specious pretensions I advanced; in any case he turned away, and either
slept, or affected sleep, while I strenuously laboured to convince my
companions that my surmise was correct.

I repeated all my former arguments about the decrease in the Rhine,
showing that the river was scarcely two-thirds of its habitual breadth,
that the nights were now dark, and well suited for a surprise, that the
columns which issued from the town took their departure with a pomp and
parade far more likely to attract the enemy's attention than escape his
notice, and were, therefore, the more likely to be destined for some
secret expedition, of which all this display was but the blind. These,
and similar facts, I grouped together with a certain ingenuity, which,
if it failed to convince, at least silenced my opponents. And now the
brief twilight, if so short a struggle between day and darkness deserved
the name, passed off, and night suddenly closed around us--a night black
and starless, for a heavy mass of lowering cloud seemed to unite with
the dense vapour that arose from the river, and the low-lying grounds
alongside of it. The air was hot and sultry, too, like the precursor
of a thunderstorm, and the rush of the stream as it washed among the
willows sounded preternaturally loud.

A hazy, indistinct flame, the watch-fire of the enemy, on the island of
Eslar, was the only object visible in the murky darkness. After a while,
however, we could detect another fire on a smaller island, a short
distance higher up the stream. This, at first dim and uncertain, blazed
up after a while, and at length we descried the dark shadows of men as
they stood around it.

It was but the day before that I had been looking on a map of the Rhine,
and remarked to myself that this small island, little more than