ne.

Suddenly we heard the sound of his trumpet, and we were much surprised
that instead of coming from below, as we had expected, it came from the
village behind us. What did that mean? It was a mystery to us, but the
same idea struck us all, that he had been killed, and that the Prussians
were blowing the trumpet to draw us into an ambush. We therefore
returned to the cottage, keeping a careful lookout with our fingers on
the trigger, and hiding under the branches; but his wife, in spite of
our entreaties, rushed on, leaping like a tigress. She thought that she
had to avenge her husband, and had fixed the bayonet to her rifle, and
we lost sight of her at the moment that we heard the trumpet again; and,
a few moments later, we heard her calling out to us:

"Come on! come on! He is alive! It is he!"

We hastened on, and saw the captain smoking his pipe at the entrance of
the village, but strangely enough, he was on horseback.

"Ah! ah!" he said to us, "you see that there is something to be done
here. Here I am on horseback already; I knocked over an uhlan yonder,
and took his horse; I suppose they were guarding the wood, but it was
by drinking and swilling in clover. One of them, the sentry at the door,
had not time to see me before I gave him a sugarplum in his stomach, and
then, before the others could come out, I jumped on the horse and was
off like a shot. Eight or ten of them followed me, I think; but I took
the crossroads through the woods. I have got scratched and torn a bit,
but here I am, and now, my good fellows, attention, and take care! Those
brigands will not rest until they have caught us, and we must receive
them with rifle bullets. Come along; let us take up our posts!"

We set out. One of us took up his position a good way from the village
on the crossroads; I was posted at the entrance of the main street,
where the road from the level country enters the village, while the two
others, the captain and his wife, were in the middle of the village,
near the church, whose tower-served for an observatory and citadel.

We had not been in our places long before we heard a shot, followed by
another, and then two, then three. The first was evidently a chassepot
--one recognized it by the sharp report, which sounds like the crack of
a whip--while the other three came from the lancers' carbines.

The captain was furious. He had given orders to the outpost to let
the enemy pass and merely to follow them at a d