"I hear!" shouted Grahame. "These horses are crazy; I can't hold
them."

The troops around them, hidden in the smoke, began to cheer
frantically; the mitrailleuse whirred and rolled out its hail of
death.

"Vive la France! Mort aux Prussiens!" howled the soldiers. A
mounted officer, his cap on the point of his sabre, his face laid
open by a lance-thrust, stood shouting, "Vive la Nation! Vive la
Nation!" while a boyish bugler shook his brass bugle in the air,
speechless with joy.

Grahame drove the terrified horses along the line of wagons for a
few paces, then, wheeling, let them gallop straight out into the
pasture on the left of the road, where a double line of trees in
the distance marked the course of a parallel road.

The chaise lurched and jolted; Rickerl, unconscious still, fell
in a limp heap, but Jack and Lorraine held him up and watched the
horses, now galloping under slackened reins.

"There are houses there! Look!" cried Grahame. "By Jove, there's
a Luxembourg gendarme, too. I--I believe we're in Luxembourg,
Marche! Upon my soul, we are! See! There is a frontier post!"

He tried to stop the horses; two strange-looking soldiers,
wearing glossy shakos and white-and-blue aiguillettes, began to
bawl at him; a group of peasants before the cottages fled,
screaming.

Grahame threw all his strength into his arms and dragged the
horses to a stand-still.

"Are we in Luxembourg?" he called to the gendarmes, who ran up,
gesticulating violently. "Are we? Good! Hold those horses, if you
please, gentlemen. There's a wounded man here. Carry him to one
of those houses. Marche, lift him, if you can. Hello! his arm is
broken at the wrist. Go easy--you, I mean--Now!"

Lorraine, aided by Jack, stepped from the post-chaise and stood
shivering as two peasants came forward and lifted Rickerl. When
they had taken him away to one of the stone houses she turned
quietly to a gendarme and said: "Monsieur, can you tell me where
the Emperor is?"

"The Emperor?" repeated the gendarme. "The Emperor is with his
army, below there along the Meuse. They are fighting--since four
this morning--at Sedan."

He pointed to the southeast.

She looked out across the wide plain.

"That convoy is going to Sedan," said the gendarme. "The army is
near Sedan; there is a battle there."

"Thank you," said Lorraine, quietly. "Jack, the Emperor is near
Sedan."

"Yes," he nodded; "we will go when you can stand it."

"I am ready. Oh, w