se, and was very ill, for some days. Then he began, steadily
but slowly, to gain strength. It was three weeks after his arrival
at the cottage before he could walk, another week before he had
recovered his strength sufficiently to think of moving.

One of his first anxieties--after recovering consciousness after
his first, and longest, attack of fever--had been upon the subject
of the terrible anxiety which they must be feeling, at home,
respecting him. They would have heard, from Colonel Tempe, that he
was missing and, as he would have been seen to fall, it was
probable that he was reported as dead. Ralph's only consolation was
that, as the Germans were at Dijon, the communication would be very
slow, and uncertain; and although it was now ten days since the
engagement, it was possible--if he could but get a letter sent, at
once--that they would get it nearly, if not quite as quickly as the
one from Colonel Tempe; especially if as was very probable the
colonel would be a great deal too engaged, during the week's
tremendous fighting which succeeded the day upon which Ralph was
wounded, for him to be able to write letters.

The first time that he saw the English surgeon, he mentioned this
anxiety, and the doctor at once offered to take charge of a letter;
and to forward it with his own, in the military post bag, to the
headquarters of the ambulance at Versailles, together with a note
to the head of the ambulance there, begging him to get it sent on
in the first bag for Dijon. In this way, it would arrive at its
destination within four or five days, at most, of its leaving
Orleans.

It was on the 2nd of January--exactly a month from the date of the
fight in which he was wounded--that, after very many thanks to his
kind host and hostess, and after forcing a handsome present upon
them, Ralph started--in a peasant's dress which had been bought for
him--for Orleans. He had still plenty of money with him; for he had
drawn the reward, of fifty thousand francs, in Paris. The greater
portion of this money he had paid into the hands of a banker, at
Tours, but Percy and he had kept out a hundred pounds each; knowing
by experience how useful it is, in case of being taken prisoner, to
have plenty of money. Ralph's wound was still bound up with
plaster, and to conceal it a rabbit-skin cap with flaps had been
bought so that, by letting down the flaps and tying them under the
chin, the greater part of the cheeks were covered.

The