s afterwards. He is
certainly looking better than I expected to find him.

"That empty sleeve is a sad disfigurement, though," he added slyly.

"How can you say so, father?" Thirza exclaimed indignantly. "I
think quite the contrary, and I feel quite proud of him with it."

"Well, there is no accounting for taste, Thirza. If you are
satisfied, I have no reason to be otherwise.

"And now, Drummond, we want to hear all about Liegnitz and Torgau;
for we have only heard the Austrian accounts. Dresden illuminated
over Daun's first despatch from Torgau, saying that the Prussian
attacks had been repulsed with tremendous slaughter, and a complete
victory gained. The next morning there came, I believe, another
despatch, but it was not published; and it was not until we heard
that Daun and Lacy were both within a few miles of the town that we
knew that, somehow or other, there had been a mistake about the
matter, a mistake that has not yet been cleared up, at Dresden."

"The defeat part of the business I can tell you from my personal
observation, the victory only from what I heard. Certainly, when I
came to my senses, after the surgeons had seen to my wounds, I had
no thought of anything but a disastrous defeat. Never did the
Prussians fight more bravely, or more hopelessly. They had to mount
a steep ascent, with four hundred cannon playing upon them; and an
army, more than three times their number, waiting at the top to
receive them."

He then proceeded to tell them the whole story of the battle.

"Ziethen seems to have blundered terribly," the count said.

"I believe that that is the king's opinion, too; but Ziethen
himself defends his action stoutly, and maintains that he could
never have succeeded in a direct attack, in broad daylight. Anyhow,
as the matter came out all right in the end, the king was too well
satisfied to do no more than grumble at him.

"The other was a hard-fought battle, too."

"The news of that was a relief to us, indeed," the count said. "It
seemed to everyone that Frederick was so completely caught in the
toils that he could not hope to extricate himself. As you know, in
this war I have, all along, held myself to be a neutral. I
considered that the plot to overthrow Frederick and partition the
kingdom was a scandalous one, and that the king disgraced himself
and us by joining in it; but since that time, my sympathies have
become more and more strongly with Frederick. It is impossible not
to