them off on receipt of my order."

In five-and-twenty minutes the colonel returned, and said:

"I regret to say, your majesty, that Lieutenant Drummond is
missing. I have inquired among the officers and find that, as he
was following General Gorlitz, he and his horse suddenly pitched
forward and lay without movement. Evidently the horse was killed by
a cannon shot, but whether Mr. Drummond was also killed, they could
not say."

"We must hope not," the king said warmly. "I would not lose so
gallant a young officer, for a great deal.

"Keith, if we take Lobositz today, let a most careful search be
made, over the ground the cavalry passed, for his body. If it is
found, so much the worse. If not, it will be a proof that he is
either wounded or unhurt, and that he has been carried off by the
Austrian cavalry; who passed over the same ground as ours, and who
certainly would not trouble themselves to carry off his body."

Chapter 6: A Prisoner.

The next morning a horse was brought round for Fergus, and he at
once started, under the escort of a captain and Lieutenant Kerr and
fifty troopers, with thirteen other officers taken prisoners at
Lobositz. Seven hundred rank and file had also been captured.
These, however, were to march under an infantry escort on the
following day. Fergus afterwards learned that sixteen officers, of
whom eleven belonged to the cavalry, had been killed; and
eighty-one officers and about eighteen hundred men wounded in the
desperate fighting at Lobositz.

Fergus found that among the Austrians the battle of the previous
day was considered a victory, although they had lost their advanced
post at Lobositz.

"I cannot say it seemed so to me," he said to the lieutenant, as
they rode away from the camp.

"Why, we have prevented the king from penetrating into Bohemia."

"But the king could have done that three days ago, without fighting
a battle," Fergus said; "just as Schwerin did at Koeniggraetz.
There would have been no need to have marched night and day across
the mountains, in order to give battle to an army nearly twice the
strength of his own. His object was to prevent you from drawing off
the Saxons, and in that he perfectly succeeded."

"Oh, there are other ways of doing that! We had only to keep along
the other side of the Elbe until we faced Pirna, then they could
have joined us."

"It sounds easy," Fergus laughed, "but it would not be so easy to
execute. These mountain defi