t the smell of blood, but he did not move. Maurice, equally
dazed, scrambled into the saddle--almost inert--a dead weight--a thing
that impeded progress and movement; but the thing that Crystal loved
above all things on earth and which Bobby knew he must wrest out of
these devouring jaws of Death and lay--safe and sound--within the
shelter of her arms.

IV

After that it meant a struggle--not for his own life, for indeed he
cared little enough for that--but for the sake of the burden which he
was carrying--a burden of infinite preciousness since Crystal's heart
and happiness were bound up with it.

Maurice de St. Genis clung half inert to him with one hand gripping the
saddle-bow, the other clutching Bobby's belt with convulsive tenacity.
Bobby himself was only half conscious, dazed with the pain of wounds,
the exertion of hoisting that dead weight across his saddle, the
deafening noise of whizzing bullets round him, the boring of the
frightened horse against its bridle, as it tried to pick its way through
the tangled heaps upon the ground.

But every moment lessened the danger from stray bullets, and the chance
of the bayonet charge from behind. The cries of "Vive l'Empereur!" round
that still standing eagle were drowned in the medley and confusion of
hundreds of other sounds. Bobby was just able to guide his horse away
from the spots where the fighting was most hot and fierce, where
Vivian's hussars attacked those two battalions of cuirassiers, where
Adam's brigade of artillery turned the flank of the chasseurs and laid
the proud bronze eagle low, where Ney and the Old Guard were showing to
the rest of the Grand Army how grizzled veterans fought and died.

He rode straight up the plateau, however, but well to the right now,
picking his way carefully with that blind instinct which the tracked
beast possesses and which the hunted man sometimes receives from God.

The dead and the dying were less thick here upon the ground. It was here
that earlier in the day the Dutch and the Belgians and the Brunswickers
had supported the British left, during those terrific cavalry charges
which British endurance and tenacity had alone been able to withstand.
It was here that Hacke's Cumberland Hussars had broken their ranks and
fled, taking to Brussels and thence to Ghent the news of terrific
disaster. Bobby's lips were tight set and he snorted like a war-horse
when he thought of that--when he thought of the misery and sorrow