"Imbecile beast," his comrade growled, as Mary moved silently away,
"could you not see by her face that the girl had friends in that corps?
Didn't you notice how pleased she looked when we praised their bravery
and how white her face came, when I said what their losses were. I tried
to comfort her by making out that most of the missing might be only
wounded, and then, imbecile that you are, you break in with your talk
and as good as tell her that if they ain't all dead, they are likely to
be so before long."

"I would have bit my tongue out before I would have said so," the other
said, penitently, "but I did not notice her looks. Do you think I would
have said it if I had, just as she had been bandaging our wounds, too,
like a little mother."

The Franc-tireurs remained in the village all night, and as soon as they
fell out had scattered over the whole ground, collected the dead and
laid them together and brought the wounded into the houses.

The soldier's estimate was not far wrong; the number of the dead
exceeded that of the wounded and most of these were very seriously hurt.
Of those found lying behind the walls many had been killed outright,
being struck on the head by bullets through the loopholes, behind which
they were firing; but of those hit during the retreat, or when at last
they took the offensive, many of the wounds, though of a disabling, were
not of a fatal nature. The company on the other side of the village had
not been pressed so severely, but the Prussian shell had fallen thickly
there, and a large proportion of the wounds were caused by fragments of
shell or stone. The company which held the barricade had comparatively
few wounded, but had lost half their number by bullets through the head
as they fired over its crest.

It was hard work, indeed, for the surgeons and nurses that night. For
many nothing could be done, they were beyond the reach of surgical aid;
but not only was there the work of bandaging wounds, but of giving drink
and soup to all that could take them, of writing down last messages to
friends from those among the dying who retained their consciousness, or
in aiding Dr. Swinburne and his assistant in their work, and in
temporarily bandaging the wounds of those for whom nothing else could be
done till daylight. At eight o'clock next morning an ambulance wagon
drew up to the door and an orderly came in to the doctor with a message.

"I have six wounded here. The surgeon told me to