thicket and
pointed to the road, crying, "Go! go!" and he stumbled down the
pasture slope to the edge of the road.

Past him plodded the red-legged infantry; he saw, through the
whirlwind of dust, the vague outlines of a tumbril and horse
standing below in the ditch, and he ran along the grassy
depression towards the vehicle. And now he saw the driver,
kneeling in the cart, his blue blouse a mass of blood, his
discoloured face staring out at the passing troops.

As he seized the horse's head and started up the slope again,
firing broke out among the thickets close at hand; the infantry
swung out to the west in a long sagging line; the chassepots
began banging right and left. For an instant he caught a glimpse
of cavalry riding hard across a bit of stubble--Uhlans he saw at
a glance--then the smoke hid them. But in that brief instant he
had seen, among the galloping cavalrymen, a mounted figure,
bareheaded, wearing a white shirt, and he knew that Rickerl was
riding for his life.

Sick at heart he peered into the straight, low rampart of smoke;
he watched the spirts of rifle-flame piercing it; he saw it turn
blacker when a cannon bellowed in the increasing din. The
infantry were lying down out there in the meadow; shadowy gray
forms passed, repassed, reeled, ran, dropped, and rose again.
Close at hand a long line of men lay flat on their bellies in the
wheat stubble. When each rifle spoke the smoke rippled through
the short wheat stalks or eddied and curled over the ground like
the gray foam of an outrushing surf.

He backed the horse and heavy cart, turned both, half blinded by
the rifle-smoke, and started up the incline. Two bullets,
speeding over the clover like singing bees, rang loudly on the
iron-bound cartwheels; the horse plunged and swerved, dragging
Jack with him, and the dead figure, kneeling in the cart, tumbled
over the tail-board with a grotesque wave of its stiffening
limbs. There it lay, sprawling in an impossible posture in the
ditch. A startled grasshopper alighted on its face, turned
around, crawled to the ear, and sat there.

And now the volley firing grew to a sustained crackle, through
which the single cannon boomed and boomed, hidden in the surging
smoke that rolled in waves, sinking, rising, like the waves of a
wind-whipped sea.

"Where are you, Alixe?" he shouted.

"Here! Hurry!"

She stood on the edge of the brier tangle as he laboured up the
slope with the horse and cart. Sir Thora