erry sound of women's laughter, while far
away cannon and musketry still roared. And over the long, straight
road--bordered with straight poplar trees--the setting sun threw
ever-lengthening shadows.

Maurice opened his eyes.

"Where am I?" he asked again.

"Close to Brussels now," replied Bobby.

"To Brussels?" murmured St. Genis feebly. "Crystal!"

"Yes," assented Bobby. "Crystal! God bless her!" Then as St. Genis was
trying to move, he added: "Can you shift a little?"

"I think so," replied the other.

"If you could ease the pressure on my leg . . . steady, now! steady!
. . . Can you sit up in the saddle? . . . Are you hurt? . . ."

"Not much. My head aches terribly. I must have hit it against something.
But that is all. I am only dizzy and sick."

"Could you ride on to Brussels alone, think you?"

"Perhaps."

"It is not far. The horse is very quiet. He will amble along if you give
him his head."

"But you?"

"I'd like to rest. I'll find shelter in a cottage perhaps . . . or in
the wood."

St. Genis said nothing more for the moment. He was intent on sliding
down from the saddle without too much assistance from Bobby. When he had
reached the ground, it took him a little while to collect himself, for
his head was swimming: he closed his eyes and put out a hand to steady
himself against a tree.

When Maurice opened his eyes again, Bobby was sitting on the ground by
the roadside: the horse was nibbling a clump of fresh, green grass.

For the first time since that awful moment when stumbling and falling
against a pile of dead, with Death behind and all around him, he had
heard the welcome call: "Can you pull yourself up?" and felt the
steadying grip upon his elbow--Maurice de St. Genis looked upon the man
to whom he owed his life.

With that stained bandage round his head, dulled and bloodshot eyes,
face blackened with powder and smoke and features drawn and haggard,
Bobby Clyffurde was indeed almost unrecognisable. But Maurice knew him
on the instant. Hitherto, he had not thought of how he had come out of
that terrible hell-fire behind La Haye Sainte--indeed, he had quickly
lost consciousness and never regained it till now: and now he knew that
the same man who in the narrow hotel room near Lyons had ungrudgingly
rendered him a signal service--had risked his life to-day for
his--Maurice's sake.

No one could have entered that awful melee and faced the bayonet charge
of Pelet's cuirassiers and the