as the French officers managed to rally small
parties of the fugitives at the bridge and led them forward again, their
efforts being aided by the mounted gendarmes, who, riding among the
soldiers, beat them with the flat of their swords, and literally drove
them forward again.

By eleven o'clock the line of the Franc-tireurs had been thickened by
the fresh arrivals, and the roar of rifles along the wall was
continuous. The French, who had hitherto fought silently, now began to
cheer, and when a regiment came up in something like fair order through
the gardens, its colonel shouted, "Forward men, and drive the Germans
out."

With a cheer of anticipated triumph those who had so stubbornly defended
the position sprang up, and the whole rushed forward against the enemy.
A tremendous volley flashed from the wall in front of them. Cuthbert
felt that he was falling. The thought flashed through his mind that his
foot had caught in something, and then he knew nothing more. When he
recovered consciousness he was lying with a score of others on the floor
of a kitchen. There was a gaping hole in the roof and loop-holes in the
walls, but of this at present he saw nothing. A man with a lantern was
standing beside him? while another was doing something, he didn't know
what, to him.

"What is it?" he muttered.

"You are wounded, mon brave, and seriously I am afraid, but not
fatally--at least I hope not."

"Is this Champigny?"

"Yes."

"Then we have held the village?"

"Yes, we beat the Prussians back all along the line, they could not
stand our artillery-fire. There, I have bandaged you up for the present,
to-morrow morning you will be taken into Paris."

"I should like to go to the American ambulance, if you can manage it,
Doctor," Cuthbert said. "I am an Englishman and have friends there."

"I will manage it if I can for you, lad. Your corps has done splendidly
to-day. Everyone says if it had not been for you, Champigny would have
been lost. So you well deserve anything I can do for you."

The desperate defence of Champigny had indeed saved that portion of the
French army across the river from destruction. It had given time for the
fugitives to rally, and as if ashamed of the panic to which they had
given way, they had afterwards fought steadily and well, and had driven
the Germans back beyond the line they had occupied the night before,
Brie-sur-Marne being now in the possession of the French, having been
carried by a