tier."

"Yes, colonel."

The battery opened with all its guns on the bastion. The right attack
followed suit. The town answered, and a furious cannonade roared and
blazed all down both lines till daybreak. Hell seemed broken loose.

Captain Jullien had followed the flying foe: but could not come up with
them: and, as the enemy had prepared for every contingency, the
fatal bastion, after first throwing a rocket or two to discover their
position, poured showers of grape into them, killed many, and would have
killed more but that Captain Neville and his gunners happened by mere
accident to dismount one gun and to kill a couple of gunners at the
others. This gave the remains of the company time to disperse and run
back. When the men were mustered, Captain Jullien and twenty-five of
his company did not answer to their names. At daybreak they were visible
from the trenches lying all by themselves within eighty yards of the
bastion.

A flag of truce came from the fort: the dead were removed on both sides
and buried. Some Prussian officers strolled into the French lines.
Civilities and cigars exchanged: "Bon jour," "Gooten daeg:" then at it
again, ding dong all down the line blazing and roaring.

At twelve o'clock the besieged had got a man on horseback, on top of a
hill, with colored flags in his hand, making signals.

"What are you up to now?" inquired Dard.

"You will see," said La Croix, affecting mystery; he knew no more than
the other.

Presently off went Long Tom on the top of the bastion, and the shot came
roaring over the heads of the speakers.

The flags were changed, and off went Long Tom again at an elevation.

Ten seconds had scarcely elapsed when a tremendous explosion took place
on the French right. Long Tom was throwing red-hot shot; one had fallen
on a powder wagon, and blown it to pieces, and killed two poor fellows
and a horse, and turned an artillery man at some distance into a seeming
nigger, but did him no great harm; only took him three days to get the
powder out of his clothes with pipe clay, and off his face with raw
potato-peel.

When the tumbril exploded, the Prussians could be heard to cheer, and
they turned to and fired every iron spout they owned. Long Tom worked
all day.

They got into a corner where the guns of the battery could not hit
them or him, and there was his long muzzle looking towards the sky, and
sending half a hundredweight of iron up into the clouds, and plunging
dow