as life, hung up with his head downwards. Admission one
shilling; children half-price. A truly patriot spectacle!--Not that
yours here is bad for a simple country-place.

[The coach drives on down the hill, and the crowd reflectively
watches the burning.]

WOMAN [singing]

I

My Love's gone a-fighting
Where war-trumpets call,
The wrongs o' men righting
Wi' carbine and ball,
And sabre for smiting,
And charger, and all

II

Of whom does he think there
Where war-trumpets call?
To whom does he drink there,
Wi' carbine and ball
On battle's red brink there,
And charger, and all?

III

Her, whose voice he hears humming
Where war-trumpets call,
"I wait, Love, thy coming
Wi' carbine and ball,
And bandsmen a-drumming
Thee, charger and all!"

[The flames reach the powder in the effigy, which is blown to
rags. The band marches off playing "When War's Alarms," the
crowd disperses, the vicar stands musing and smoking at his
garden door till the fire goes out and darkness curtains the
scene.]

ACT SIXTH

SCENE I

THE BELGIAN FRONTIER

[The village of Beaumont stands in the centre foreground of a
birds'-eye prospect across the Belgian frontier from the French
side, being close to the Sambre further back in the scene, which
pursues a crinkled course between high banks from Maubeuge on the
left to Charleroi on the right.

In the shadows that muffle all objects, innumerable bodies of
infantry and cavalry are discerned bivouacking in and around the
village. This mass of men forms the central column of NAPOLEONS'S
army.

The right column is seen at a distance on that hand, also near
the frontier, on the road leading towards Charleroi; and the
left column by Solre-sur-Sambre, where the frontier and the river
nearly coincide

The obscurity thins and the June dawn appears.]

DUMB SHOW

The bivouacs of the central column become broken up, and a movement
ensues rightwards on Charleroi. The twelve regiments of cavalry
which are in advance move off first; in half an hour more bodies
move, and more in the next half-hour, till by eight o'clock the
whole central army is gliding on. It defiles in strands by narrow
tracks through the forest. Ridi