reater part of the night upon the field in search of me and that my
servant Mike was in a state of distraction at my absence that bordered on
insanity. While he was speaking, a burst of laughter and the tones of a
well-remembered voice behind attracted my attention.

"Made a very good thing of it, upon my life. A dressing-case,--not gold,
you know, but silver-gilt,--a dozen knives with blood-stone handles, and a
little coffee-pot, with the imperial arms,--not to speak of three hundred
Naps in a green silk purse--Lord! it reminds me of the Peninsula. Do you
know those Prussians are mere barbarians, haven't a notion of civilized
war. Bless your heart, my fellows in the Legion would have ransacked the
whole coach, from the boot to the sword-case, in half the time they took to
cut down the coachman."

"The major, as I live!" said I. "How goes it, Major?"

"Eh, Charley! when did you turn up? Delighted see you. They told me you
were badly wounded or killed or something of that kind. But I should have
paid the little debt to your executors all the same."

"All the same, no doubt, Major; but where, in Heaven's name, did you fall
upon that mine of pillage you have just been talking of?"

"In the Emperor's carriage, to be sure, boy. While the duke was watching
all day the advance of Ney's column and keeping an anxious look-out for the
Prussians, I sat in a window in this old farm-house, and never took my eye
off the garden at Planchenoit. I saw the imperial carriage there in the
morning; it was there also at noon; and they never put the horses to it
till past seven in the evening. The roads were very heavy, and the crowd
was great. I judged the pace couldn't be a fast one; and with four of the
Enniskilleners I charged it like a man. The Prussians, however, had the
start of us; and if they hadn't thought, from my seat on horseback and
my general appearance, that I was Lord Uxbridge, I should have got but a
younger son's portion. However, I got in first, filled my pockets with a
few little _souvenirs_ of the Emperor, and then laying my hands upon what
was readiest, got out in time to escape being shot; for two of Blucher's
hussars, thinking I must be the Emperor, fired at me through the window."

"What an escape you had!"

"Hadn't I though? Fortunate, too, my Enniskilleners saw the whole thing;
for I intend to make the circumstance the ground of an application for a
pension. Hark ye, Charley, don't say anything about the coffe