to move
towards Dresden."

"I daresay I can learn all that for you, without difficulty; for I
supply several of the inns with faggots. There are troops quartered
in all of them, and the helpers and servants are sure to hear what
is going on. Not, of course, in the inns where the French are
quartered, but where the German men are lodged. They speak plainly
enough there, and indeed everyone knows that a great many of them
are there against their will. The Hesse and Gotha and Dessau men
would all prefer fighting on the Prussian side, but when they were
called out they had to obey.

"At what time will you start?"

"I should like to get to Erfurt as soon as the place is astir."

"That is by five," the man said. "There is trumpeting and drumming
enough by that time, and no one could sleep longer if they wanted
to."

"Then we will start at dawn."

The peasant would have given up his bed to Fergus, but the latter
would not hear of it, and said that he was quite accustomed to
sleeping on the ground; whereupon the peasant went out, and
returned with a large armful of rushes; which, as he told Fergus,
he had cut only the day before to mend a hole in the thatch. Fergus
was well content, for he knew well enough that he should sleep very
much better, on fresh rushes, than he should in the peasant's bed
place, where he would probably be assailed by an army of fleas.

As soon as the man and his wife were astir in the morning, Fergus
got up; bathed his head and face in a tiny streamlet, that ran
within a few yards of the house; then, after cutting a hunch of
bread to eat on their way, the two started.

They did not come down upon the main road until within a mile and a
half of the town, and they then passed through a large village,
where a troop of French cavalry were engaged in grooming their
horses. They attracted no attention whatever, and entered Erfurt at
a quarter-past five. They separated when they got into the town,
agreeing to meet in front of the cathedral, at eleven o'clock.

Fergus went to an eating house, where he saw a party of French
non-commissioned officers and soldiers seated. They were talking
freely, confident that neither the landlord, the man who was
serving them, nor the two or three Germans present could understand
them.

It was evident that they had very little confidence in Soubise.

"One would think," a sergeant said, "that we were going to change
our nationality, and to settle down here for li