sed, perhaps,
a thousand times before, yet it was so changed now she hardly knew it.
Twenty-four hours had ruthlessly levelled the noble trees, the
hedgerows, and the fields of grain. Twenty-four hours of battle had
done all this and more. In all those ghastly hours, one thought had
haunted Felice; one thought alone,--the thought of Petit-Poulain! She
pictured him tied in that far-away stall, wondering why she did not
come. He was hungry, she knew; her dugs were full of milk and they
pained her; how sweet would be her relief when her Petit-Poulain broke
his long fast. Petit-Poulain, Petit-Poulain, Petit-Poulain,--this one
thought and this alone had old Felice throughout those hours of battle
and of horror.

Could this have been the farm-house? It was a ruin now. Shells had
torn it apart. Where was the good master Jacques; had he gone with the
cure to the defence of the town? And Justine,--where was she? Bullets
had cut away the rose-trees and the smoke-bush; the garden was no more.
The havoc, the desolation, was complete. The cote, which had
surmounted the pole around which an ivy twined, had been swept away.
The pigeons now circled here and there bewildered; wondering, perhaps,
why Justine did not come and call to them and feed them.

To this seared, scarred spot came old Felice. He that had ridden her
into battle lay with his face downward near those distant vineyard
hills. His blood had stained Felice's neck; a bullet had grazed her
flank, but that was a slight wound,--riderless, she turned and came
from the battle-field and sought her Petit-Poulain once again.

Hard by the ruins of cottage, of garden, and of cote, she came up
standing; she was steaming and breathless. She rolled her eyes wildly
around,--she looked for the stable where she had left Petit-Poulain.
She trembled as if an overwhelming apprehension of disaster suddenly
possessed her. She gave a whinny, pathetic in its tenderness. She was
calling Petit-Poulain. But there was no answer.

Petit-Poulain lay dead in the ruins of the stable. His shelter had not
escaped the fury of the battle. He could not run away, for they had
tied him fast when they carried his old mother off. So now he lay amid
that debris, his eyes half open in death and his legs stretched out
stark and stiff.

And old Felice,--her udder bursting with the maternal grace he never
again should know, and her heart breaking with the agony of sudden and
awful bereavemen