All the
information he could get from him, however, was of the vaguest; yes, it
was over that way; you turned to the left, after passing a big field of
potatoes.

Immediately she was in possession of this slender clue Silvine insisted
on starting out again. An inferior officer of the medical department
chanced to pass with a cart just then, collecting the dead; she hailed
him and notified him of the presence of the wounded men, then, throwing
the donkey's bridle across her arm, urged him along over the muddy road,
eager to reach the designated spot, beyond the big potato field. When
they had gone some distance she stopped, yielding to her despair.

"My God, where is the place! Where can it be?"

Prosper looked about him, taxing his recollection fruitlessly.

"I told you, it is close beside the place where we made our charge. If
only I could find my poor Zephyr--"

And he cast a wistful look on the dead horses that lay around them. It
had been his secret hope, his dearest wish, during the entire time they
had been wandering over the plateau, to see his mount once more, to bid
him a last farewell.

"It ought to be somewhere in this vicinity," he suddenly said.
"See! over there to the left, there are the three trees. You see the
wheel-tracks? And, look, over yonder is a broken-down caisson. We have
found the spot; we are here at last!"

Quivering with emotion, Silvine darted forward and eagerly scanned the
faces of two corpses, two artillerymen who had fallen by the roadside.

"He is not here! He is not here! You cannot have seen aright. Yes, that
is it; some delusion must have cheated your eyes." And little by little
an air-drawn hope, a wild delight crept into her mind. "If you were
mistaken, if he should be alive! And be sure he is alive, since he is
not here!"

Suddenly she gave utterance to a low, smothered cry. She had turned,
and was standing on the very position that the battery had occupied.
The scene was most frightful, the ground torn and fissured as by an
earthquake and covered with wreckage of every description, the dead
lying as they had fallen in every imaginable attitude of horror, arms
bent and twisted, legs doubled under them, heads thrown back, the lips
parted over the white teeth as if their last breath had been expended in
shouting defiance to the foe. A corporal had died with his hands pressed
convulsively to his eyes, unable longer to endure the dread spectacle.
Some gold coins that a lieu