hrough the crowd.
Even at the last the man did not spare his horse, but spurred through
the ranks to the Captain's very side, and then and then only sprang to
the ground. His face was pale, his eyes were bloodshot. His right arm
was bound up in bloodstained cloths. With an oath of amazement, the
Captain recognized the officer whom he had left in charge of Creance,
and he thundered, "What is this? What is it?"

"They have got Creance!" the man gasped, reeling as he spoke. "They have
got--Creance!"

"Who?" the Captain shrieked, his face purple with rage.

"The little man of Bearn! The King of Navarre! He assaulted it five
hundred strong an hour after you left, and had the gate down before we
could fire a dozen shots. We did what we could, but we were but one to
seven. I swear, Captain, that we did all we could. Look at this!"

Almost black in the face, the Captain swore another oath. It was not
only that he saw governorship and honours vanish like Will-o'-the-wisps,
but that he saw even more quickly that he had made himself the
laughing-stock of a kingdom! And that was the truth. To this day, among
the stories which the southern French love to tell of the prowess and
astuteness of their great Henry, there is no tradition more frequently
told, none more frequently made the subject of mirth, than that of the
famous exchange of Creance for Lusigny; of the move by which between
dawn and sunrise, without warning, without a word, he gave his opponents
mate.

THE HOUSE ON THE WALL

In the summer of 1706, two years after the second battle of Hochstett,
which Englishmen call Blenheim, in a world ringing with the names of
Marlborough and Eugene, Louis of Baden and Villars, Villeroy the
Incapable and Boufflers the Brave--a world, for us of later days, of
dark chaos, luridly lit by the flames of burning hamlets, and galloped
through by huge troopers wearing periwigs and thigh boots, and carrying
pistols two feet long in the barrel--one of the Austrian captains sat
down before the frontier town of Huymonde, in Spanish Flanders, and
prepared to take it.

Whereat Huymonde was not too greatly or too fearfully moved. A warm
town, of fat burghers and narrow streets, and oak wainscots that winked
in the firelight, and burnished flagons that caught the drinker's smile,
it was not to be lightly excited; and it had been besieged, heaven only
knows how many times before. Men made ready as for a long frost, took
count of wine an