And now it burst like an ocean roller, smashing into the wagon lines, a turmoil of smoke and flashes, a chaos of maddened, plunging horses and bayonets, and the flashing downward strokes of heavy sabres. Grahame seized the reins, and lashed his horses; a cuirassier drove his bloody, foam-covered charger into the road in front and fell, butchered by a dozen bayonets.

Three Uhlans followed, whirling their lances and crashing through the lines, their frantic horses crazed by blows and wounds. More cuirassiers galloped up; the crush became horrible. A horse and steel-clad rider were hurled bodily under the wagon-wheels—an Uhlan, transfixed by a bayonet, still clung to his shattered lance-butt, screaming, staggering in his stirrups. Suddenly the window of the post-chaise was smashed in and a horse and rider pitched under the wheels, almost overturning carriage and occupants.

"Easy, Marche!" shouted Grahame. "Don't try to get out!"

Jack heard him, but sprang into the road. For an instant he reeled about in the crush and smoke, then, stooping, he seized a prostrate man, lifted him, and with one tremendous effort pitched him into the chaise.

Grahame, standing up in the driver's seat, watched him in amazement for a moment; but his horses demanded all his attention now, for they were backing under the pressure of the cart in front.

As for Jack, once in the chaise again he pulled the unconscious man to the seat, calling Lorraine to hold him up. Then he tore the Uhlan's helmet from the stunned man's head and flung it out into the road; after it he threw sabre and revolver.

"Give me that rug!" he cried to Lorraine, and he seized it and wrapped it around the Uhlan's legs.

Grahame had managed to get clear of the other wagon now and was driving out into the pasture, almost obscured by rifle smoke.

"Oh, Jack!" faltered Lorraine—"it is Rickerl!"

It was Rickerl, stunned by the fall from his horse, lying back between them.

"They'd kill him if they saw his uniform!" muttered Jack. "Hark! the French are cheering! They've repulsed the charge! Grahame, do you hear?—do you hear?"

"I hear!" shouted Grahame. "These horses are crazy; I can't hold them."

The troops around them, hidden in the smoke, began to cheer frantically; the mitrailleuse whirred and rolled out its hail of death.

"Vive la France! Mort aux Prussiens!" howled the soldiers. A mounted officer, his cap on the point of his sabre, his face laid open by a lance-thrust, stood shouting, "Vive la Nation! Vive la Nation!" while a boyish bugler shook his brass bugle in the air, speechless with joy.

Grahame drove the terrified horses along the line of wagons for a few paces, then, wheeling, let them gallop straight out into the pasture on the left of the road, where a double line of trees in the distance marked the course of a parallel road.

The chaise lurched and jolted; Rickerl, unconscious still, fell in a limp heap, but Jack and Lorraine held him up and watched the horses, now galloping under slackened reins.

"There are houses there! Look!" cried Grahame. "By Jove, there's a Luxembourg gendarme, too. I—I believe we're in Luxembourg, Marche! Upon my soul, we are! See! There is a frontier post!"

He tried to stop the horses; two strange-looking soldiers, wearing glossy shakos and white-and-blue aiguillettes, began to bawl at him; a group of peasants before the cottages fled, screaming.

Grahame threw all his strength into his arms and dragged the horses to a stand-still.

"Are we in Luxembourg?" he called to the gendarmes, who ran up, gesticulating violently. "Are we? Good! Hold those horses, if you please, gentlemen. There's a wounded man here. Carry him to one of those houses. Marche, lift him, if you can. Hello! his arm is broken at the wrist. Go easy—you, I mean—Now!"

Lorraine, aided by Jack, stepped from the post-chaise and stood shivering as two peasants came forward and lifted Rickerl. When they had taken him away to one of the stone houses she turned quietly to a gendarme and said: "Monsieur, can you tell me where the Emperor is?"

"The Emperor?" repeated the gendarme. "The Emperor is with his army, below there along the Meuse. They are fighting—since four this morning—at Sedan."

He pointed to the southeast.

She looked out across the wide plain.

"That convoy is going to Sedan," said the gendarme. "The army is near Sedan; there is a battle there."

"Thank you," said Lorraine, quietly. "Jack, the Emperor is near Sedan."

"Yes," he nodded; "we will go when you can stand it."

"I am ready. Oh, we must not wait, Jack; did you not see how they even attacked the wounded?"

He turned and looked into her eyes.

"It is the first French cheer I have heard," she continued, feverishly. "They beat back those Prussians and cheered for France! Oh, Jack, there is time yet! France is rising now—France is resisting. We must do our part; we must not wait. Jack, I am ready!"

"We can't walk," he muttered.

"We will go with the convoy. They are on the way to Sedan, where the Emperor is. Jack, they are fighting at Sedan! Do you understand?"

She came closer, looking up into his troubled eyes.

"Show me the box," she whispered.

He drew the flat steel box from his coat.

After a moment she said, "Nothing must stop us now. I am ready!"

"You are not ready," he replied, sullenly; "you need rest."

"'Tiens ta Foy,' Jack."

The colour dyed his pale cheeks and he straightened up. "Always, Lorraine."

Grahame called to them from the cottage: "You can get a horse and wagon here! Come and eat something at once!"

Slowly, with weary, drooping heads, they walked across the road, past a wretched custom-house, where two painted sentry-boxes leaned, past a squalid barnyard full of amber-coloured, unsavoury puddles and gaunt poultry, up to the thatched stone house where Grahame stood waiting. Over the door hung a withered branch of mistletoe, above this swung a sign:

ESTAMINET.

"Your Uhlan is in a bad way, I think," began Grahame; "he's got a broken arm and two broken ribs. This is a nasty little place to leave him in."

"Grahame," said Jack, earnestly, "I've got to leave him. I am forced to go to Sedan as soon as we can swallow a bit of bread and wine. The Uhlan is my comrade and friend; he may be more than that some day. What on earth am I to do?"

They followed Grahame into a room where a table stood covered by a moist, unpleasant cloth. The meal was simple—a half-bottle of sour red wine for each guest, a fragment of black bread, and a ragout made of something that had once been alive—possibly a chicken, possibly a sheep.

Grahame finished his wine, bolted a morsel or two of bread and ragout, and leaned back in his chair with a whimsical glance at Lorraine.

"Now, I'll tell you what I'll do, Marche," he said. "My horses need rest, so do I, so does our wounded Uhlan. I'll stay in this garden of Eden until noon, if you like, then I'll drive our wounded man to Diekirch, where the Hotel des Ardennes is as good an inn as you can find in Luxembourg, or in Belgium either. Then I'll follow you to Sedan."

They all rose from the table; Lorraine came and held out her hand, thanking Grahame for his kindness to them and to Rickerl.

"Good-by," said Grahame, going with them to the door. "There's your dog-cart; it's paid for, and here's a little bag of French money—no thanks, my dear fellow; we can settle all that later. But what the deuce you two children are going to Sedan for is more than my old brains can comprehend."

He stood, with handsome head bared, and bent gravely over Lorraine's hands—impulsive little hands, now trembling, as the tears of gratitude trembled on her lashes.

And so they drove away in their dog-cart, down the flat, poplar-bordered road, silent, deeply moved, wondering what the end might be.

The repeated shocks, the dreadful experiences and encounters, the indelible impressions of desolation and grief and suffering had deadened in Lorraine all sense of personal suffering or grief. For her land and her people her heart had bled, drop by drop—her sensitive soul lay crushed within her. Nothing of selfish despair came over her, because France still stood. She had suffered too much to remember herself. Even her love for Jack had become merely a detail. She loved as she breathed—involuntarily. There was nothing new or strange or sweet in it—nothing was left of its freshness, its grace, its delicacy. The bloom was gone.

In her tired breast her heart beat faintly; its burden was the weary repetition of a prayer—an old, old prayer—a supplication—for mercy, for France, and for the salvation of its people. Where she had learned it she did not know; how she remembered it, why she repeated it, minute by minute, hour by hour, she could not tell. But it was always beating in her heart, this prayer—old, so old!—and half forgotten—

"'To Thee, Mary, exalted— To Thee, Mary, exalted—'"

Her tired heart took up the rhythm where her mind refused to follow, and she leaned on Jack's shoulder, looking out over the gray land with innocent, sorrowful eyes.

Vaguely she remembered her lonely childhood, but did not grieve; vaguely she thought of her youth, passing away from a tear-drenched land through the smoke of battles. She did not grieve—the last sad tear for self had fallen and quenched the last smouldering spark of selfishness. The wasted hills of her province seemed to rise from their ashes and sear her eyes; the flames of a devastated land dazzled and pained her; every drop of French blood that drenched the mother-land seemed drawn from her own veins—every cry of terror, every groan, every gasp, seemed wrenched from her own slender body. The quiet, wide-eyed dead accused her, the stark skeletons of ravaged houses reproached her.

She turned to the man she loved, but it was the voice of a dying land that answered, "Come!" and she responded with all a passion of surrender. What had she accomplished as yet? In the bitterness of her loneliness she answered, "Nothing." She had worked by the wayside as she passed—in the field, in the hospital, in the midst of beleaguered soldiers. But what was that? There was something else further on that called her—what she did not know, and yet she knew it was waiting somewhere for her. "Perhaps it is death," she mused, leaning on Jack's shoulder. "Perhaps it is his death." That did not frighten her; if it was to be, it would be; but, through it, through the hideous turmoil of fire and blood and pounding guns and shouting—through death itself—somewhere, on the other side of the dreadful valley of terror, lay salvation for the mother-land. Thither they were bound—she and the man she loved.

All around them lay the flat, colourless plains of Luxembourg; to the east, the wagon-train of wounded crawled across the landscape under a pallid sky. The road now bore towards the frontier again; Jack shook the reins listlessly; the horse loped on. Slowly they approached the border, where, on the French side, the convoy crept forward enveloped in ragged clouds of dust. Now they could distinguish the drivers, blue-bloused and tattered, swinging their long whips; now they saw the infantry, plodding on behind the wagons, stringing along on either flank, their officers riding with bent heads, the red legs of the fantassins blurred through the red dust.

At the junction of the two roads stood a boundary post. A slovenly Luxembourg gendarme sat on a stone under it, smoking and balancing his rifle over both knees.

"You can't pass," he said, looking up as Jack drew rein. A moment later he pocketed a gold piece that Jack offered, yawned, laughed, and yawned again.

"You can buy contraband cigars at two sous each in the village below," he observed.

"What news is there to tell?" demanded Jack.

"News? The same as usual. They are shelling Strassbourg with mortars; the city is on fire. Six hundred women and children left the city; the International Aid Society demanded it."

Presently he added: "A big battle was fought this morning along the Meuse. You can hear the guns yet."

"I have heard them for an hour," replied Jack.

They listened. Far to the south the steady intonation of the cannon vibrated, a vague sustained rumour, no louder, no lower, always the same monotonous measure, flowing like the harmony of flowing water, passionless, changeless, interminable.

"Along the Meuse?" asked Jack, at last.

"Yes."

"Sedan?"

"Yes, Sedan."

The slow convoy was passing now; the creak of wheel and the harsh scrape of axle and spring grated in their ears; the wind changed; the murmur of the cannonade was blotted out in the trample of hoofs, the thud of marching infantry.

Jack swung his horse's head and drove out across the boundary into the French road. On every side crowded the teams, where the low mutter of the wounded rose from the foul straw; on every side pressed the red-legged infantry, rifles en bandouliere, shrunken, faded caps pushed back from thin, sick faces.

"My soldiers!" murmured Lorraine, sitting up straight. "Oh, the pity of it!—the pity!"

An officer passed, followed by a bugler. He glanced vacantly at Jack, then at Lorraine. Another officer came by, leading his patient, bleeding horse, over which was flung the dusty body of a brother soldier.

The long convoy was moving more swiftly now; the air trembled with the cries of the mangled or the hoarse groans of the dying. A Sister of Mercy—her frail arm in a sling—crept on her knees among the wounded lying in a straw-filled cart. Over all, louder, deeper, dominating the confusion of the horses and the tramp of men, rolled the cannonade. The pulsating air, deep-laden with the monstrous waves of sound, seemed to beat in Lorraine's face—the throbbing of her heart ceased for a moment. Louder, louder, nearer, more terrible sounded the thunder, breaking in long, majestic reverberations among the nearer hills; the earth began to shake, the sky struck back the iron-throated echoes—sounding, resounding, from horizon to horizon.

And now the troops around them were firing as they advanced; sheeted mist lashed with lightning enveloped the convoy, through which rang the tremendous clang of the cannon. Once there came a momentary break in the smoke—a gleam of hills, and a valley black with men—a glimpse of a distant town, a river—then the stinging smoke rushed outward, the little flames leaped and sank and played through the fog. Broad, level bands of mist, fringed with flame, cut the pasture to the right; the earth rocked with the stupendous cannon shock, the ripping rifle crashes chimed a dreadful treble.

There was a bridge there in the mist; an iron gate, a heavy wall of masonry, a glimpse of a moat below. The crowded wagons, groaning under their load of death, the dusty infantry, the officers, the startled horses, jammed the bridge to the parapets. Wheels splintered and cracked, long-lashed whips snapped and rose, horses strained, recoiled, leaped up, and fell scrambling and kicking.

"Open the gates, for God's sake!" they were shouting.

A great shell, moaning in its flight above the smoke, shrieked and plunged headlong among the wagons. There came a glare of blinding light, a velvety white cloud, a roar, and through the gates, no longer choked, rolled the wagon-train, a frantic stampede of men and horses. It caught the dog-cart and its occupants with it; it crushed the horse, seized the vehicle, and flung it inside the gates as a flood flings driftwood on the rocks.

Jack clung to the reins; the wretched horse staggered out into the stony street, fell, and rolled over stone-dead.

Jack turned and caught Lorraine in both arms, and jumped to a sidewalk crowded with soldiers, and at the same time the crush of wagons ground the dog-cart to splinters on the cobble-stones. The crowd choked every inch of the pavement—women, children, soldiers, shouting out something that seemed to move the masses to delirium. Jack, his arm around Lorraine, beat his way forward through the throng, murmuring anxiously, "Are you hurt, Lorraine? Are you hurt?" And she replied, faintly, "No, Jack. Oh, what is it? What is it?"

Soldiers blocked his way now, but he pushed between them towards a cleared space on a slope of grass. Up the slope he staggered and out on to a stone terrace above the crush of the street. An officer stood alone on the terrace, pulling at some ropes around a pole on the parapet.

"What—what is that?" stammered Lorraine, as a white flag shot up along the flag-staff and fluttered drearily over the wall.

"Lorraine!" cried Jack; but she sprang to the pole and tore the ropes free. The white flag fell to the ground.

The officer turned to her, his face whiter than the flag. The crowd in the street below roared.

"Monsieur," gasped Lorraine, "France is not conquered! That flag is the flag of dishonour!"

They stared at each other in silence, then the officer stepped to the flag-pole and picked up the ropes.

"Not that!—not that!" cried Lorraine, shuddering.

"It is the Emperor's orders."

The officer drew the rope tight—the white flag crawled slowly up the staff, fluttered, and stopped.

Lorraine covered her eyes with her hands; the roar of the crowd below was in her ears.

"O God!—O God!" she whispered.

"Lorraine!" whispered Jack, both arms around her.

Her head fell forward on her breast.

Overhead the white flag caught the breeze again, and floated out over the ramparts of Sedan.

"By the Emperor's orders," said the officer, coming close to Jack.

Then for the first time Jack saw that it was Georges Carriere who stood there, ghastly pale, his eyes fixed on Lorraine.

"She has fainted," muttered Jack, lifting her. "Georges, is it all over?"

"Yes," said Georges, and he walked over to the flag-pole, and stood there looking up at the white badge of dishonour.



XXX

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

Daylight was fading in the room where Lorraine lay in a stupor so deep that at moments the Sister of Mercy and the young military surgeon could scarcely believe her alive there on the pillows.

Jack, his head on his arms, stood by the window, staring out vacantly at the streak of light in the west, against which, on the straight, gray ramparts, the white flag flapped black against the dying sun.

Under the window, in the muddy, black streets, the packed throngs swayed and staggered and trampled through the filth, amid a crush of camp-wagons, artillery, ambulances, and crowding squadrons of cavalry. Riotous line soldiers cried out "Treason!" and hissed their generals or cursed their Emperor; the tall cuirassiers surged by in silence, sombre faces turned towards the west, where the white flag flew on the ramparts. Heavier, denser, more suffocating grew the crush; an ambulance broke down, a caisson smashed into a lamp-post, a cuirassier's horse slipped in the greasy depths of the filth, pitching its steel-clad rider to the pavement. Through the Place d'Alsace-Lorraine, through the Avenue du College and the Place d'Armes, passed the turbulent torrent of men and horses and cannon. The Grande Rue was choked from the church to the bronze statue in the Place Turenne; the Porte de Paris was piled with dead, the Porte de Balan tottered a mass of ruins.

The cannonade still shook the hills to the south in spite of the white flag on the citadel. There were white flags, too, on the ramparts, on the Port des Capucins, and at the Gate of Paris. An officer, followed by a lancer, who carried a white pennon on his lance-point, entered the street from the north. A dozen soldiers and officers hacked it off with their sabres, crying, "No surrender! no surrender!" Shells continued to fall into the packed streets, blowing horrible gaps in the masses of struggling men. The sun set in a crimson blaze, reflecting on window and roof and the bloody waters of the river. When at last it sank behind the smoky hills, the blackness in the city was lighted by lurid flames from burning houses and the swift crimson glare of Prussian shells, still plunging into the town. Through the crash of crumbling walls, the hiss and explosion of falling shells, the awful clamour and din in the streets, the town clock struck solemnly six times. As if at a signal the firing died away; a desolate silence fell over the city—a silence full of rumours, of strange movements—a stillness pulsating with the death gasps of a nation.

Out on the heights of La Moncelle, of Daigny, and Givonne lanterns glimmered where the good Sisters of Mercy and the ambulance corps passed among the dead and dying—the thirty-five thousand dead and dying! The plateau of Illy, where the cavalry had charged again and again, was twinkling with thousands of lanterns; on the heights of Frenois Prussian torches swung, signalling victory.

But the spectacle in the interior of the town—a town of nineteen thousand people, into which now were crushed seventy thousand frantic soldiers, was dreadful beyond description. Horror multiplied on horror. The two bridges and the streets were so jammed with horses and artillery trains that it seemed impossible for any human being to move another inch. In the glare of the flames from the houses on fire, in the middle of the smoke, horses, cannon, fourgons, charrettes, ambulances, piles of dead and dying, formed a sickening pell-mell. In this chaos starving soldiers, holding lighted lanterns, tore strips of flesh from dead horses lying in the mud, killed by the shells. Arms, broken and foul with blood and mud—rifles, pistols, sabres, lances, casques, mitrailleuses—covered the pavements.

The gates of the town were closed; the water in the fortification moats reflected the red light from the flames. The glacis of the ramparts was covered by black masses of soldiers, watching the placing of a cordon of German sentinels around the walls.

All public buildings, all the churches, were choked with wounded; their blood covered everything. On the steps of the churches poor wretches sat bandaging their torn limbs with strips of bloody muslin.

Strange sounds came from the stone walls along the street, where zouaves, turcos, and line soldiers, cursing and weeping with rage, were smashing their rifles to pieces rather than surrender them. Artillerymen were spiking their guns, some ran them into the river, some hammered the mitrailleuses out of shape with pickaxes. The cavalry flung their sabres into the river, the cuirassiers threw away revolvers and helmets. Everywhere officers were breaking their swords and cursing the surrender. The officers of the 74th of the Line threw their sabres and even their decorations into the Meuse. Everywhere, too, regiments were burning their colours and destroying their eagles; the colonel of the 52d of the Line himself burned his colours in the presence of all the officers of the regiment, in the centre of the street. The 88th and 30th, the 68th, the 78th, and 74th regiments followed this example. "Mort aux Vaches!" howled a herd of half-crazed reservists, bursting into the crush. "Mort aux Prussiens! A la lanterne, Badinguet! Vive la Republique!"

Jack turned away from the window. The tall Sister of Mercy stood beside the bed where Lorraine lay.

Jack made a sign.

"She is asleep," murmured the Sister; "you may come nearer now. Close the window."

Before he could reach the bed the door was opened violently from without, and an officer entered swinging a lantern. He did not see Lorraine at first, but held the door open, saying to Jack: "Pardon, monsieur; this house is reserved. I am very sorry to trouble you."

Another officer entered, an old man, covered to the eyes by his crimson gold-brocaded cap. Two more followed.

"There is a sick person here," said Jack. "You cannot have the intention of turning her out! It is inhuman—"

He stopped short, stupefied at the sight of the old officer, who now stood bareheaded in the lantern-light, looking at the bed where Lorraine lay. It was the Emperor!—her father.

Slowly the Emperor advanced to the bed, his dreary eyes fixed on Lorraine's pale cheeks.

In the silence the cries from the street outside rose clear and distinct:

"Vive la Republique! A bas l'Empereur!"

The Emperor spoke, looking straight at Lorraine: "Gentlemen, we cannot disturb a woman. Pray find another house."

After a moment the officers began to back out, one by one, through the doorway. The Emperor still stood by the bed, his vague, inscrutable eyes fixed on Lorraine.

Jack moved towards the bed, trembling. The Emperor raised his colourless face.

"Monsieur—your sister? No—your wife?"

"My promised wife, sire," muttered Jack, cold with fear.

"A child," said the Emperor, softly.

With a vague gesture he stepped nearer, smoothed the coverlet, bent closer, and touched the sleeping girl's forehead with his lips. Then he stood up, gray-faced, impassive.

"I am an old man," he said, as though to himself. He looked at Jack, who now came close to him, holding out something in one hand. It was the steel box.

"For me, monsieur?" asked the Emperor.

Jack nodded. He could not speak.

The Emperor took the box, still looking at Jack.

There was a moment's silence, then Jack spoke: "It may be too late. It is a plan of a balloon—we brought it to you from Lorraine—"

The uproar in the streets drowned his voice—"Mort a l'Empereur! A bas l'Empire!"

A staff-officer opened the door and peered in; the Emperor stepped to the threshold.

"I thank you—I thank you both, my children," he said. His eyes wandered again towards the bed; the cries in the street rang out furiously.

"Mort a l'Empereur!"

The Sister of Mercy was kneeling by the bed; Jack shivered, and dropped his head.

When he looked up the Emperor had gone.

All night long he watched at the bedside, leaning on his elbow, one hand shading his eyes from the candle-flame. The Sister of Mercy, white and worn with the duties of that terrible day, slept upright in an arm-chair.

Dawn brought the sad notes of Prussian trumpets from the ramparts pealing through the devastated city; at sunrise the pavements rang and shook with the trample of the White Cuirassiers. A Saxon infantry band burst into the "Wacht am Rhine" at the Paris Gate; the Place Turenne vomited Uhlans. Jack sank down by the bed, burying his face in the sheets.

The Sister of Mercy rubbed her eyes and started up. She touched Jack on the shoulder.

"I am going to be very ill," he said, raising a face burning with fever. "Never mind me, but stay with her."

"I understand," said the Sister, gently. "You must lie in the room beyond."

The fever seized Jack with a swiftness incredible.

"Then—swear it—by the—by the Saviour there—there on your crucifix!" he muttered.

"I swear," she answered, softly.

His mind wandered a little, but he set his teeth and rose, staggering to the table. He wrote something on a bit of paper with shaking fingers.

"Send for them," he said. "You can telegraph now. They are in Brussels—my sister—my family—"

Then, blinded by the raging fever, he made his way uncertainly to the bed, groped for Lorraine's hand, pressed it, and lay down at her feet.

"Call the surgeon!" he gasped.

And it was very many days before he said anything else with as much sense in it.

"God help them!" cried the Sister of Mercy, tearfully, her thin hands clasped to her lips. Alone she guided Jack into the room beyond.

Outside the Prussian bands were playing. The sun flung a long, golden beam through the window straight across Lorraine's breast.

She stirred, and murmured in her sleep, "Jack! Jack! 'Tiens ta Foy!'"

But Jack was past hearing now; and when, at sundown, the young surgeon came into his room he was nearly past all aid.

"Typhoid?" asked the Sister.

"The Pest!" said the surgeon, gravely.

The Sister started a little.

"I will stay," she murmured. "Send this despatch when you go out. Can he live?"

They whispered together a moment, stepping softly to the door of the room where Lorraine lay.

"It can't be helped now," said the surgeon, looking at Lorraine; "she'll be well enough by to-morrow; she must stay with you. The chances are that he will die."

The trample of the White Cuirassiers in the street outside filled the room; the serried squadrons thundered past, steel ringing on steel, horses neighing, trumpets sounding the "Royal March." Lorraine's eyes unclosed.

"Jack!"

There was no answer.

The surgeon whispered to the Sister of Mercy: "Don't forget to hang out the pest flag."

"Jack! Jack!" wailed Lorraine, sitting up in bed. Through the tangled masses of her heavy hair, gilded by the morning sunshine, her eyes, bright with fever, roamed around the room, startled, despairing. Under the window the White Cuirassiers were singing as they rode:

"Flieg', Adler, flieg'! Wir stuermen nach, Ein einig Volk in Waffen, Wir stuermen nach ob tausendfach Des Todes Pforten Klaffen! Und fallen wir, flieg', Adler, flieg'! Aus unserm Blute maechst der Sieg! Vorwaerts! Flieg', Adler, flieg'! Victoria! Victoria! Mit uns ist Gott!"

Terrified, turning her head from side to side, Lorraine stretched out her hands. She tried to speak, but her ears were filled with the deep voices shouting the splendid battle-hymn—

"Fly, Eagle! fly! With us is God!"

She crept out of bed, her bare feet white with cold, her bare arms flushed and burning. Blinded by the blaze of the rising sun, she felt her way around the room, calling, "Jack! Jack!" The window was open; she crept to it. The street was a surging, scintillating torrent of steel.

"God with us!"

The White Cuirassiers shook their glittering sabres; the melancholy trumpet's blast swept skyward; the standards flapped. Suddenly the stony street trembled with the outcrash of drums; the cuirassiers halted, the steel-mailed squadrons parted right and left; a carriage drove at a gallop through the opened ranks. Lorraine leaned from the window; the officer in the carriage looked up.

As the fallen Emperor's eyes met Lorraine's, she stretched out both little bare arms and cried: "Vive la France!"—and he was gone to his captivity, the White Cuirassiers galloping on every side.

The Sister of Mercy opened the door behind, calling her.

"He is dying," she said. "He is in here. Come quickly!"

Lorraine turned her head. Her eyes were sweet and serene, her whole pale face transfigured.

"He will live," she said. "I am here."

"It is the pest!" muttered the Sister.

Lorraine glided into the hall and unclosed the door of the silent room.

He opened his eyes.

"There is no death!" she whispered, her face against his. "There is neither death nor sorrow nor dying."

The clamour in the street died out; the wind was still; the pest flag under the window hung motionless.

He sighed; his eyes closed.

She stretched out beside him, her body against his, her bare arms around his neck.

His heart fluttered; stopped; fluttered; was silent; moved once again; ceased.

"Jack!"

Again his heart stirred—or was it her own?

When the morning sun broke over the ramparts of Sedan she fell asleep in his arms, lulled by the pulsations of his heart.



XXXI

THE PROPHECY OF LORRAINE

When the Vicomte and Madame de Morteyn arrived in Sedan from Brussels the last of the French prisoners had been gone a week; the foul city was swept clean; the corpse-choked river no longer flung its dead across the shallows of the island of Glaires; the canal was untroubled by the ghastly freight of death that had collected like logs on a boom below the village of Iges.

All day the tramp of Prussian patrols echoed along the stony streets; all day the sinister outburst of the hoarse Bavarian bugles woke the echoes behind the ramparts. Red Cross flags drooped in the sunshine from churches, from banks, from every barrack, every depot, every public building. The pest flags waved gaily over the Asylum and the little Museum. A few appeared along the Avenue Philippoteaux, others still fluttered on the Gothic church and the convent across the Viaduc de Torcy. Three miles away the ruins of the village of Bazeilles lay in the bright September sunshine. Bavarian soldiers in greasy corvee lumbered among the charred chaos searching for their dead.

The plain of Illy, the heights of La Moncelle, Daigny, Givonne, and Frenois were vast cemeteries. Dredging was going on along the river, whither the curious small boys of Sedan betook themselves and stayed from morning till night watching the recovering of rusty sabres, bayonets, rifles, cannon, and often more grewsome flotsam. It was probably the latter that drew the small boys like flies; neither the one nor the other are easily glutted with horrors.

The silver trumpets of the Saxon Riders were chorusing the noon call from the Porte de Paris when a long train crept into the Sedan station and pulled up in the sunshine, surrounded by a cordon of Hanover Riflemen. One by one the passengers passed into the station, where passports were shown and apathetic commissaires took charge of the baggage.

There were no hacks, no conveyances of any kind, so the tall, white-bearded gentleman in black, who stood waiting anxiously for his passport, gave his arm to an old lady, heavily veiled, and bowed down with the sudden age that great grief brings. Beside her walked a young girl, also in deep mourning.

A man on crutches directed them to the Place Turenne, hobbling after them to murmur his thanks for the piece of silver the girl slipped into his hands.

"The number on the house is 31," he repeated; "the pest flag is no longer outside."

"The pest?" murmured the old man under his breath.

At that moment a young girl came out of the crowded station, looking around her anxiously.

"Lorraine!" cried the white-haired man.

She was in his arms before he could move. Madame de Morteyn clung to her, too, sobbing convulsively; Dorothy hid her face in her black-edged handkerchief.

After a moment Lorraine stepped back, drying her sweet eyes. Dorothy kissed her again and again.

"I—I don't see why we should cry," said Lorraine, while the tears ran down her flushed cheeks. "If he had died it would have been different."

After a silence she said again:

"You will see. We are not unhappy—Jack and I. Monsieur Grahame came yesterday with Rickerl, who is doing very well."

"Rickerl here, too?" whispered Dorothy.

Lorraine slipped an arm through hers, looking back at the old people.

"Come," she said, serenely, "Jack is able to sit up." Then in Dorothy's ear she whispered, "I dare not tell them—you must."

"Dare not tell them—"

"That—that I married Jack—this morning."

The girls' arms pressed each other.

German officers passed and repassed, rigid, supercilious, staring at the young girls with that half-sneering, half-impudent, near-sighted gaze peculiar to the breed. Their insolent eyes, however, dropped before the clear, mild glance of the old vicomte.

His face was furrowed by care and grief, but he held his white head high and stepped with an elasticity that he had not known in years. Defeat, disaster, sorrow, could not weaken him; he was of the old stock, the real beau-sabreur, a relic of the old regime, that grew young in the face of defeat, that died of a broken heart at the breath of dishonour. There had been no dishonour, as he understood it—there had been defeat, bitter defeat. That was part of his trade, to face defeat nobly, courteously, chivalrously; to bow with a smile on his lips to the more skilful adversary who had disarmed him.

Bitterness he knew, when the stiff Prussian officers clanked past along the sidewalk of this French city; despair he never dreamed of. As for dishonour—that is the cry of the pack, the refuge of the snarling mob yelping at the bombastic vociferations of some mean-souled demagogue; and in Paris there were many, and the pack howled in the Republic at the crack of the lash.

"Lady Hesketh is here, too," said Lorraine. "She appears to be a little reconciled to her loss. Dorothy, it breaks my heart to see Rickerl. He lies in his room all day, silent, ghastly white. He does not believe that Alixe—did what she did—and died there at Morteyn. Oh, I am glad you are here. Jack says you must tell Rickerl nothing about Sir Thorald; nobody is to know that—now all is ended."

"Yes," said Dorothy.

When they came to the house, Archibald Grahame and Lady Hesketh met them at the door. Molly Hesketh had wept a great deal at first. She wept still, but more moderately.

"My angel child!" she said, taking Dorothy to her bosom. Grahame took off his hat.

The old people hurried to Jack's room above; Dorothy, guided by Lorraine, hastened to Rickerl; Archibald Grahame looked genially at Molly and said:

"Now don't, Lady Hesketh—I beg you won't. Try to be cheerful. We must find something to divert you."

"I don't wish to," said Molly.

"There is a band concert this afternoon in the Place Turenne," suggested Grahame.

"I'll never go," said Molly; "I haven't anything fit to wear."

In the room above, Madame de Morteyn sat with Jack's hand in hers, smiling through her tears. The old vicomte stood beside her, one arm clasping Lorraine's slender waist.

"Children! children! wicked ones!" he repeated, "how dare you marry each other like two little heathen?"

"It comes, my dear, from your having married an American wife," said Madame de Morteyn, brushing away the tears; "they do those things in America."

"America!" grumbled the vicomte, perfectly delighted—"a nice country for young savages. Lorraine, you at least should have known better."

"I did," said Lorraine; "I ought to have married Jack long ago."

The vicomte was speechless; Jack laughed and pressed his aunt's hands.

They spoke of Morteyn, of their hope that one day they might rebuild it. They spoke, too, of Paris, cuirassed with steel, flinging defiance to the German floods that rolled towards the walls from north, south, west, and east.

"There is no death," said Lorraine; "the years renew their life. We shall all live. France will be reborn."

"There is no death," repeated the old man, and kissed her on the brow.

So they stood there in the sunlight, tearless, serene, moved by the prophecy of their child Lorraine. And Lorraine sat beside her husband, her fathomless blue eyes dreaming in the sunlight—dreaming of her Province of Lorraine, of the Honour of France, of the Justice of God—dreaming of love and the sweetness of her youth, unfolding like a fresh rose at dawn, there on her husband's breast.

THE END



BOOKS BY ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

LORRAINE. Post 8vo $1.25

THE CONSPIRATORS. Ill'd. Post 8vo 1.50

A YOUNG MAN IN A HURRY. Ill'd. Post 8vo 1.50

CARDIGAN. Illustrated. Post 8vo 1.50

THE MAID-AT-ARMS. Illustrated. Post 8vo 1.50

THE KING IN YELLOW. Post 8vo 1.50

THE MAIDS OF PARADISE. Ill'd. Post 8vo 1.50

IN SEARCH OF THE UNKNOWN. Ill'd. Post 8vo 1.50

OUTDOORLAND. Ill'd in Colors. Sq. 8vo, net 1.50

ORCHARDLAND. Ill'd in Colors. Sq. 8vo, net 1.50

RIVERLAND. Ill'd in Colors. Sq. 8vo, net 1.50

THE MYSTERY OF CHOICE. 16mo 1.25

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, N. Y.

THE END