e Rittmeister
glared around; his eyes fell on the Countess.

"You know this country, madame?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"Will you set us on our way through the Gunstett hill-road?"

"No."

The chapel bell was clanging wildly; the beacon shot up in a whirling
column of sparks and red smoke.

"Put that woman into the carriage!" bellowed the officer. "I'm
cursed if I leave her to set the whole country yapping at our heels!
Loisel, put her in beside the prisoner! Madame, it is useless to
resist. Hark! What's that sound of galloping?"

I listened. I heard nothing save the clamor of the chapel bell.

An Uhlan laid a heavy hand on the shoulder of the listening Countess;
she tried to draw back, but he pushed her brutally into the carriage,
and she stumbled and fell into the cushions beside me.

"Uhlans, into your saddles!" cried the Rittmeister, sharply. "Two
men to the wagon!--a man on the box there! Here you, Jacques Bonhomme,
drive carefully or I'll hang you higher than the Strasbourg clock. Are
the wounded in the straw? Sepp, take the riderless horses. Peloton,
attention! Draw sabres! March! Trot!"

Fever had already begun to turn my head; the jolting of the carriage
brought me to my senses at times; at times, too, I could hear the two
wounded Uhlans groaning in the wagon behind me, the tramping of the
cavalry ahead, the dull rattle of lance butts in the leather
stirrup-boots.

If I could only have fainted, but I could not, and the agony grew so
intense that I bit my lip through to choke the scream that strained my
throat.

Once the carriage stopped; in the darkness I heard somebody whisper:
"There go the French riders!" And I fancied I heard a far echo of
hoof-strokes along the road to La Trappe. It might have been the
fancy of an intermittent delirium; it may have been my delayed
gendarmes--I never knew. And the carriage presently moved on more
smoothly, as though we were now on one of those even military
high-roads which traverse France from Luxembourg to the sea.

Which way we were going I did not know, I did not care. Absurdly
mingled with sick fancies came flashes of reason, when I could see the
sky frosted with silver, and little, bluish stars peeping down. At
times I recognized the mounted men around me as Prussian Uhlans, and
weakly wondered by what deviltry they had got into France, and what
malignant spell they cast over the land that the very stones did not
rise up and smite them from their yellow-and