t with a little round table in her hands, and
affected a composure which was belied by her shaking hands and her
glowing cheek.

After a few words of homely welcome--not eloquent, but very sincere--she
went off again with her apron to her eyes. She reappeared with the good
cheer, and served the poor fellows with radiant zeal.

"What regiment?" asked Raynal.

Dard was about to answer, but his superior stopped him severely;
then, rising with his hand to his forehead, he replied, with pride,
"Twenty-fourth brigade, second company. We were cut up at Philipsburg,
and incorporated with the 12th."

Raynal instantly regretted his question; for Josephine's eye fixed on
Sergeant La Croix with an expression words cannot paint. Yet she showed
more composure, real or forced, than he expected.

"Heaven sends him," said she. "My friend, tell me, were you--ah!"

Colonel Raynal interfered hastily. "Think what you do. He can tell you
nothing but what we know, not so much, in fact, as we know; for, now I
look at him, I think this is the very sergeant we found lying insensible
under the bastion. He must have been struck before the bastion was taken
even."

"I was, colonel, I was. I remember nothing but losing my senses, and
feeling the colors go out of my hand."

"There, you see, he knows nothing," said Raynal.

"It was hot work, colonel, under that bastion, but it was hotter to the
poor fellows that got in. I heard all about it from Private Dard here."

"So, then, it was you who carried the colors?"

"Yes, I was struck down with the colors of the brigade in my hand,"
cried La Croix.

"See how people blunder about, everything; they told me the colonel
carried the colors."

"Why, of course he did. You don't think our colonel, the fighting
colonel, would let me hold the colors of the brigade so long as he was
alive. No; he was struck by a Prussian bullet, and he had just time to
hand the colors to me, and point with his sword to the bastion, and down
he went. It was hot work, I can tell you. I did not hold them long, not
thirty seconds, and if we could know their history, they passed through
more hands than that before they got to the Prussian flag-staff."

Raynal suddenly rose, and walked rapidly to and fro, with his hands
behind him.

"Poor colonel!" continued La Croix. "Well, I love to think he died like
a soldier, and not like some of my poor comrades, hashed to atoms, and
not a volley fired over him. I hope they put a