f it were possible that the
Frenchmen did not know the weakness of the land. Our Uhlans and
infantry were manipulated dexterously to make a battalion look
like a brigade; but we had an army corps in front of us. We held
the place by sheer impudence."

"I know it," said Jack; "it makes me ill to think of it."

"It ought to make Frossard ill! Had a French army of invasion
pushed on through Saint-Johann on the 2d of August and marched
rapidly into the interior, the Germans could not possibly have
concentrated their scattered regiments, and it is my firm
conviction that Napoleon would have seen the Rhine without having
had to fight a pitched battle. Well, Marche, I drink to neither
one side nor the other, but--here's to the men with backbones.
Prosit!"

They laughed and clinked glasses. Grahame finished his bottle,
rose, politely stifled a yawn, and looked humourously at Jack.

"There are two beds in my room; will you take one?" said the
young fellow.

"Thank you, I will," said Grahame, "and as soon as you please, my
dear fellow."

So Jack led the way and ushered the other into a huge room with
two beds, seemingly lost in distant diagonal corners. Grahame
promptly kicked off his boots, and sat down on his bed.

"I saw a funny thing in Saarbrueck," he said. "It was right in the
midst of a cannonade--the shells were smashing the chimneys on
the Hotel Hagen and raising hell generally. And right in the
midst of the whole blessed mess, cool as a cucumber, came
sauntering a real live British swell with a coat adorned with
field-glasses and girdle and a dozen pockets, an eye-glass, a dog
that seemed dearer to him than life, and a drawl that had not
been perceptibly quickened by the French cannon. He-aw-had been
going eastward somewhere to-aw-Constantinople, or Saint-Petersburg,
or-aw-somewhere, when he-aw-heard that it might be amusing at
Saarbrueck. A shell knocked a cart-load of tiles around his head,
and he looked at it through his eye-glass. Marche, I never laughed
so in my life. He's a good fellow, though--he's trotting about with
the Hohenzollern Regiment now, and, really, I miss him. His name is
Hesketh--"

"Not Sir Thorald?" cried Jack.

"Eh?--yes, that's the man. Know him?"

"A little," said Jack, laughing, and went out, bidding Graham
good-night, and promising to have him roused at dawn.

"Aren't you going to turn in?" called Grahame, fearful of having
inconvenienced Jack in his own quarters.

"Yes," s