e must not wait, Jack; did you not see how they
even attacked the wounded?"

He turned and looked into her eyes.

"It is the first French cheer I have heard," she continued,
feverishly. "They beat back those Prussians and cheered for
France! Oh, Jack, there is time yet! France is rising now--France
is resisting. We must do our part; we must not wait. Jack, I am
ready!"

"We can't walk," he muttered.

"We will go with the convoy. They are on the way to Sedan, where
the Emperor is. Jack, they are fighting at Sedan! Do you
understand?"

She came closer, looking up into his troubled eyes.

"Show me the box," she whispered.

He drew the flat steel box from his coat.

After a moment she said, "Nothing must stop us now. I am ready!"

"You are not ready," he replied, sullenly; "you need rest."

"'Tiens ta Foy,' Jack."

The colour dyed his pale cheeks and he straightened up. "Always,
Lorraine."

Grahame called to them from the cottage: "You can get a horse and
wagon here! Come and eat something at once!"

Slowly, with weary, drooping heads, they walked across the road,
past a wretched custom-house, where two painted sentry-boxes
leaned, past a squalid barnyard full of amber-coloured, unsavoury
puddles and gaunt poultry, up to the thatched stone house where
Grahame stood waiting. Over the door hung a withered branch of
mistletoe, above this swung a sign:

ESTAMINET.

"Your Uhlan is in a bad way, I think," began Grahame; "he's got a
broken arm and two broken ribs. This is a nasty little place to
leave him in."

"Grahame," said Jack, earnestly, "I've got to leave him. I am
forced to go to Sedan as soon as we can swallow a bit of bread
and wine. The Uhlan is my comrade and friend; he may be more than
that some day. What on earth am I to do?"

They followed Grahame into a room where a table stood covered by
a moist, unpleasant cloth. The meal was simple--a half-bottle of
sour red wine for each guest, a fragment of black bread, and a
ragout made of something that had once been alive--possibly a
chicken, possibly a sheep.

Grahame finished his wine, bolted a morsel or two of bread and
ragout, and leaned back in his chair with a whimsical glance at
Lorraine.

"Now, I'll tell you what I'll do, Marche," he said. "My horses
need rest, so do I, so does our wounded Uhlan. I'll stay in this
garden of Eden until noon, if you like, then I'll drive our
wounded man to Diekirch, where the Hotel des Ardennes is as good