we reported he drew
from his heavy dolman our commissions, restoring us to rank and pay in
the regiment _de marche_ which he commanded.

At sunrise I had bade good-bye to the sweetest woman on earth; at noon
we were miles to the westward, riding like demons on Buckhurst's heavy
trail.

I am not sure that we ever saw him again, though once, weeks later,
Speed and I and a dozen hussars gave chase to a mounted man near St.
Brieuc, and that man might have been Buckhurst. He led us a
magnificent chase straight to the coast, where we rode plump into a
covey of Prussian hussars, who were standing on their saddles, hacking
away at the telegraph-wires with their heavy, curved sabres.

That was our first and last sight of the enemy in either Prussian or
communistic guise, though in the long, terrible days and nights of
that winter of '71, when three French armies froze, and the white
death, not the Prussians, ended all for France, rumors of insurrection
came to us from the starving capital, and we heard of the red flag
flying on the Hotel-de-Ville, and the rising of the carbineers under
Flourens; and some spoke of the leader of the insurrection and called
him John Buckhurst.

That Buckhurst could have penetrated Paris neither Speed nor I
believed; but, as all now know, we were wrong, though the testimony
concerning his death[A] at the hands of his terrible colleague,
Mortier, was not in evidence until a young ruffian, known as "The
Mouse," confessed before he expiated his crimes on Sartory Plain in
1872.

Thus, for three blank, bitter months, freezing and starving, the 1st
Regiment _de marche_ of Lorient Hussars stood guard at Brest over the
diamonds of the crown of France.

-----

[A] This affair is dealt with in _Ashes of Empire_.

XXII

THE SECRET

The news of the collapse of the army of the East found our wretchedly
clothed and half-starved hussars still patrolling the environs of
Brest from Belair to the Pont Tournant, and from the banks of the
Elorn clear around the ramparts to Lannion Bay, where the ice-sheathed
iron-clads lay with banked fires off the Port Militaire, and the
goulet guard-boats patrolled the Port de Commerce from the Passe de
l'Ouest to the hook on the Digue and clear around to Cap Espagnol.

All Brest, from the battlements of the Chateau of St. Martin, in
Belair, was on watch, so wrought up was the governor over the attempt
on the treasure-train. For three months our troopers scarc