ere about to turn to the left and take a short cut across the
fields, but on coming to a road, bordered with a row of poplars on
either side they beheld directly in their path the watch-fire of a
Prussian detachment. The bayonet of the sentry, pacing his beat, gleamed
in the ruddy light, the men were finishing their soup and conversing;
the fugitives stood not upon the order of their going, but plunged into
the recesses of the wood again, in mortal terror lest they might be
pursued. They thought they heard the sound of voices, of footsteps on
their trail, and thus for over an hour they wandered at random among the
copses, until all idea of locality was obliterated from their brain; now
racing like affrighted animals through the underbrush, again brought up
all standing, the cold sweat trickling down their face, before a tree in
which they beheld a Prussian. And the end of it was that they again came
out on the poplar-bordered road not more than ten paces from the sentry,
and quite near the soldiers, who were toasting their toes in tranquil
comfort.

"Hang the luck!" grumbled Jean. "This must be an enchanted wood."

This time, however, they had been heard. The sound of snapping twigs and
rolling stones betrayed them. And as they did not answer the challenge
of the sentry, but made off at the double-quick, the men seized their
muskets and sent a shower of bullets crashing through the thicket, into
which the fugitives had plunged incontinently.

"_Nom de Dieu!_" ejaculated Jean, with a stifled cry of pain.

He had received something that felt like the cut of a whip in the calf
of his left leg, but the impact was so violent that it drove him up
against a tree.

"Are you hurt?" Maurice anxiously inquired.

"Yes, and in the leg, worse luck!"

They both stood holding their breath and listening, in dread expectancy
of hearing their pursuers clamoring at their heels; but the firing had
ceased and nothing stirred amid the intense stillness that had again
settled down upon the wood and the surrounding country. It was evident
that the Prussians had no inclination to beat up the thicket.

Jean, who was doing his best to keep on his feet; forced back a groan.
Maurice sustained him with his arm.

"Can't you walk?"

"I should say not!" He gave way to a fit of rage, he, always so
self-contained. He clenched his fists, could have thumped himself. "God
in Heaven, if this is not hard luck! to have one's legs knocked from
under