e displayed in offering them.

The great Republican General started upon his campaign in the Low
Countries as fully satisfied as under the circumstances he could hope to
be. Malus and Petit-Jean were not only enlarged but reinstated, he was
promised abundant supplies of all descriptions, and he was assured that
the Republic approved and endorsed his plan of campaign.

La Boulaye, his mission satisfactorily discharged, turned homewards once
more, and with an escort of six men and a corporal he swiftly retraced
his steps through that blackened, war-ravaged country. They had slept a
night at Mons, and they were within a short three leagues of French
soil when they chanced to ride towards noon into the little hamlet of
Boisvert. Probably they would have gone straight through without drawing
rein, but that, as they passed the Auberge de l'Aigle, La Boulaye espied
upon the green fronting the wayside hostelry a company of a half-dozen
soldiers playing at bowls with cannon-balls.

The sight brought Caron to a sudden halt, and he sat his horse observing
them and wondering how it chanced that these men should find themselves
so far from the army. Three of them showed signs of having been recently
wounded. One carried his arm in a sling, another limped painfully and
by the aid of a stick, whilst the head of the third was swathed in
bandages. But most remarkable were they by virtue of their clothes. One
fellow--he of the bandaged head--wore a coat of yellow brocaded silk,
which, in spite of a rent in the shoulder, and sundry stains of wine and
oil, was unmistakably of a comparative newness. Beneath this appeared
the nankeens and black leggings of a soldier. Another covered his greasy
locks with a three-cornered hat, richly laced in gold. A third flaunted
under his ragged blue coat a gold-broidered waistcoat and a Brussels
cravat. A valuable ring flashed from the grimy finger of a fourth,
who, instead of the military white nankeens, wore a pair of black
silk breeches. There was one--he of the injured arm--resplendent in a
redingote of crimson velvet, whilst he of the limp supported himself
upon a gold-headed cane of ebony, which was in ludicrous discord with
the tattered blue coat, the phrygian cap, and the toes that peeped
through his broken boots.

They paused in their game to inspect, in their turn, the newcomers,
and to La Boulaye it seemed that their glances were not free from
uneasiness.

"A picturesque company on my life