, and an ownerless hen was disputing the banquet with the winged
band, until then hidden in the trees and roofs. The silence intensified
the rustling of the leaves, the hum of the insects, the summer
respiration of the sunburnt soil which appeared to have contracted
timorously under the weight of the men in arms.

Desnoyers was losing exact track of the passing of time. He was
beginning to believe that all which had gone before must have been a bad
dream. The calm surrounding him made what had been happening here seem
most improbable.

Suddenly he saw something moving at the far end of the road, at the very
highest point where the white ribbon of the highway touched the blue of
the horizon. There were two men on horseback, two little tin soldiers
who appeared to have escaped from a box of toys. He had brought with
him a pair of field glasses that had often surprised marauders on his
property, and by their aid he saw more clearly the two riders clad in
greenish gray! They were carrying lances and wearing helmets ending in a
horizontal plate . . . They! He could not doubt it: before his eyes were
the first Uhlans!

For some time they remained motionless, as though exploring the horizon.
Then, from the obscure masses of vegetation that bordered the roadside,
others and still others came sallying forth in groups. The little tin
soldiers no longer were showing their silhouettes against the horizon's
blue; the whiteness of the highway was now making their background,
ascending behind their heads. They came slowly down, like a band that
fears ambush, examining carefully everything around.

The advisability of prompt retirement made Don Marcelo bring his
investigations to a close. It would be most disastrous for him if they
surprised him here. But on lowering his glasses something extraordinary
passed across his field of vision. A short distance away, so that he
could almost touch them with his hand, he saw many men skulking along
in the shadow of the trees on both sides of the road. His surprise
increased as he became convinced that they were Frenchmen, wearing
kepis. Where were they coming from? . . . He examined more closely with
his spy glass. They were stragglers in a lamentable state of body and
a picturesque variety of uniforms--infantry, Zouaves, dragoons without
their horses. And with them were forest guards and officers from the
villages that had received too late the news of the retreat--altogether
about fifty. A