tightly.

Hussars in crimson tunics, armed with curious weapons, half carbine,
half pistol, followed the Uhlans, filling the smoky street with a
flood of gorgeous color.

Suddenly a company of Saxon pioneers arrived on the double-quick,
halted, fell out, and began to break down the locked doors of the
houses on either side of the street. At the same time Prussian
infantry came hurrying past, dragging behind them dozens of vehicles,
long hay-wagons, gardeners' carts, heavy wheelbarrows, even a dingy
private carriage, with tarnished lamps, rocking crazily on rusty
springs.

The soldiers wheeled these wagons into a double line, forming a
complete chain across the street, where the Turcos had commenced to
dig their ditch and breastworks--a barricade high enough to check a
charge, and cunningly arranged, too, for the wooden abatis could not
be seen from the eastern end of the street, where a charge of French
infantry or cavalry must enter Morsbronn if it entered at all.

We watched the building of the barricade, fascinated. Soldiers entered
the houses on either side of the street, only to reappear at the
windows and thrust out helmeted heads. More soldiers came, running
heavily--the road swarmed with them; some threw themselves flat under
the wagons, some knelt, thrusting their needle-guns through the
wheel-spokes; others remained standing, rifles resting over the rails
of the long, skeleton hay-wagons.

"Something is going to happen," I said, as a group of smartly
uniformed officers appeared on the roof of the opposite house and
hastily scrambled to the ridge-pole.

Something was surely going to happen; the officers were using their
field-glasses and pointing excitedly across the roof-tops; the windows
of every house as far as I could see were black with helmets; a
regiment in column came up on the double, halted, disintegrated,
melting away behind walls, into yards, doorways, gardens.

A colonel of infantry, splendidly mounted, drew bridle under our
loop-hole and looked up at the officers on the roof across the way.

"Attention, you up there!" he shouted. "Is it infantry?"

"No!" bawled an officer, hollowed hand to his cheek. "It's their
brigade of heavy cavalry coming like an earthquake!"

"The cuirassiers!" I cried, electrified. "It's Michel's cuirassiers,
madame! And--oh, the barricade!" I groaned, twisting my fingers in
helpless rage. "They'll be caught in a trap; they'll die like flies
in that street."