t, was a brother
of Henriette's and Maurice's mother. He lived at Remilly, in a house
perched upon a high hill, about four miles from Sedan.

"Good!" Honore calmly answered; "the father don't worry his head a great
deal on my account, but go there all the same if you feel inclined."

At that moment there was a movement over in the direction of the
farmhouse, and they beheld the straggler, the man who had been arrested
as a spy, come forth, free, accompanied only by a single officer. He had
likely had papers to show, or had trumped up a story of some kind, for
they were simply expelling him from the camp. In the darkening twilight,
and at the distance they were, they could not make him out distinctly,
only a big, square-shouldered fellow with a rough shock of reddish hair.
And yet Maurice gave vent to an exclamation of surprise.

"Honore! look there. If one wouldn't swear he was the Prussian--you
know, Goliah!"

The name made the artilleryman start as if he had been shot; he strained
his blazing eyes to follow the receding shape. Goliah Steinberg, the
journeyman butcher, the man who had set him and his father by the ears,
who had stolen from him his Silvine; the whole base, dirty, miserable
story, from which he had not yet ceased to suffer! He would have run
after, would have caught him by the throat and strangled him, but the
man had already crossed the line of stacked muskets, was moving off and
vanishing in the darkness.

"Oh!" he murmured, "Goliah! no, it can't be he. He is down yonder,
fighting on the other side. If I ever come across him--"

He shook his fist with an air of menace at the dusky horizon, at the
wide empurpled stretch of eastern sky that stood for Prussia in his
eyes. No one spoke; they heard the strains of retreat again, but very
distant now, away at the extreme end of the camp, blended and lost among
the hum of other indistinguishable sounds.

"_Fichtre_!" exclaimed Honore, "I shall have the pleasure of sleeping on
the soft side of a plank in the guard-house unless I make haste back to
roll-call. Good-night--adieu, everybody!"

And grasping Weiss by both his hands and giving them a hearty squeeze,
he strode swiftly away toward the slight elevation where the guns of
the reserves were parked, without again mentioning his father's name or
sending any word to Silvine, whose name lay at the end of his tongue.

The minutes slipped away, and over toward the left, where the 2d brigade
lay, a bugle