to be endangered.

Maurice thought of Prosper as he watched them. "That fellow, yonder,
looks like him," he said, under his breath. "I wonder if it is he?"

"Of whom are you speaking?" asked Jean.

"Of that young man of Remilly, whose brother we met at Osches, you
remember."

Behind the chasseurs, when they had all passed, came a general officer
and his staff dashing down the descending road, and Maurice recognized
the general of their brigade, Bourgain-Desfeuilles, shouting and
gesticulating wildly. He had torn himself reluctantly from his
comfortable quarters at the Hotel of the Golden Cross, and it was
evident from the horrible temper he was in that the condition of affairs
that morning was not satisfactory to him. In a tone of voice so loud
that everyone could hear he roared:

"In the devil's name, what stream is that off yonder, the Meuse or the
Moselle?"

The fog dispersed at last, this time in earnest. As at Bazeilles the
effect was theatrical; the curtain rolled slowly upward to the flies,
disclosing the setting of the stage. From a sky of transparent blue
the sun poured down a flood of bright, golden light, and Maurice was no
longer at a loss to recognize their position.

"Ah!" he said to Jean, "we are on the plateau de l'Algerie. That village
that you see across the valley, directly in our front, is Floing, and
that more distant one is Saint-Menges, and that one, more distant still,
a little to the right, is Fleigneux. Then those scrubby trees on the
horizon, away in the background, are the forest of the Ardennes, and
there lies the frontier--"

He went on to explain their position, naming each locality and pointing
to it with outstretched hand. The plateau de l'Algerie was a belt of
reddish ground, something less than two miles in length, sloping gently
downward from the wood of la Garenne toward the Meuse, from which it
was separated by the meadows. On it the line of the 7th corps had
been established by General Douay, who felt that his numbers were not
sufficient to defend so extended a position and properly maintain his
touch with the 1st corps, which was posted at right angles with his
line, occupying the valley of la Givonne, from the wood of la Garenne to
Daigny.

"Oh, isn't it grand, isn't it magnificent!"

And Maurice, revolving on his heel, made with his hand a sweeping
gesture that embraced the entire horizon. From their position on the
plateau the whole wide field of battle lay stretch