as ended. Marteau might have killed him, but to what end?

"For your wife's sake," he cried, lowering his sword, and the next
minute he paid for his mercy, for the other English threw themselves
upon him.

But Frank Yeovil did not get off scot free. There was one lad who had
followed Marteau, who had marched with the Guard, who had no
compunctions of conscience whatever, and with his last pistol Pierre
gave the reeling Englishman the fatal shot. Yes, Pierre paid too.
They would certainly have spared him, since he was only a boy, but
maddened by the death of their officer, half a dozen bayonets were
plunged into his breast.

Thither the next day came Sir Gervaise Yeovil, who had been with the
Duke at the Duchess of Richmond's famous ball in Brussels. Young Frank
had left that ball at four o'clock in the morning, according to order,
only to find that later orders had directed the army to march at two
and that his baggage had gone. He had fought that day in pumps and
silk stockings which he had worn at the ball; dabbled, gory, muddy,
they were now.

Sir Gervaise Yeovil was an old friend of the Duke of Wellington. The
Iron Duke, as they called him, was nevertheless very tender-hearted
that morning. He told the Baronet that his son was somewhere on the
field. Colonel Colborne of the Fifty-second had marked him in the
charge, but that was all. Neither Vivian nor Vandeleur could throw any
light on the situation. There were twenty thousand of the allied
armies on that field and thirty thousand French.

"My God," said Sir Gervaise, staring along the line of the French
retreat, "what is so terrible as a defeat?"

"Nothing," said the Duke gravely. Then looking at the nearer hillside
he added those tremendous words which epitomized war in a way in which
no one save a great modern captain has ever epitomized it. "Nothing,"
he said slowly, "unless it be a victory."

They found the Guard. That was easy. There they lay in lines where
they had fallen; the tall bearskins on their heads, the muskets still
clasped in their hands. There, too, they found young Yeovil at last.
They revived him. Someone sought to take the Eagle from him, but with
a sudden accession of strength he protested against it.

"Father," he whispered to the old man bending over him, his red face
pale and working, "mine."

"True," said the Duke. "He captured it. Let him keep it."

"O God!" broke out the Baronet. "Frank! Can nothing be don