melt powder, but had never even seen an
enemy. The news spread through the ranks, and every head was turned to
look at them. Not such bad-looking fellows, those uhlans, after all.

"One of them looks like a jolly little fat fellow," Loubet remarked.

But presently an entire squadron came out and showed itself on a
plateau to the left of the little wood, and at sight of the threatening
demonstration the column halted. An officer came riding up with orders,
and the 106th moved off a little and took position on the bank of a
small stream behind a clump of trees. The artillery had come hurrying
back from the front on a gallop and taken possession of a low, rounded
hill. For near two hours they remained there thus in line of battle
without the occurrence of anything further; the body of hostile cavalry
remained motionless in the distance, and finally, concluding that they
were only wasting time that was valuable, the officers set the column
moving again.

"Ah well," Jean murmured regretfully, "we are not booked for it this
time."

Maurice, too, had felt his finger-tips tingling with the desire to have
just one shot. He kept harping on the theme of the mistake they had
made the day before in not going to the support of the 5th corps. If
the Prussians had not made their attack yet, it must be because their
infantry had not got up in sufficient strength, whence it was evident
that their display of cavalry in the distance was made with no other
end than to harass us and check the advance of our corps. We had again
fallen into the trap set for us, and thenceforth the regiment was
constantly greeted with the sight of uhlans popping up on its left
flank wherever the ground was favorable for them, tracking it like
sleuthhounds, disappearing behind a farmhouse only to reappear at the
corner of a wood.

It eventually produced a disheartening effect on the troops to see that
cordon closing in on them in the distance and enveloping them as in the
meshes of some gigantic, invisible net. Even Pache and Lapoulle had an
opinion on the subject.

"It is beginning to be tiresome!" they said. "It would be a comfort to
send them our compliments in the shape of a musket-ball!"

But they kept toiling wearily onward on their tired feet, that seemed
to them as if they were of lead. In the distress and suffering of that
day's march there was ever present to all the undefined sensation of the
proximity of the enemy, drawing in on them from eve