a small collection of poor, badly built houses, which had been
deserted long before. It lay on a steep slope, which terminated in a
wooded plain. The country people sell the wood; they send it down the
ravines, which are called _coulees_, locally, and which lead down to the
plain, and there they stack it into piles, which they sell thrice a year
to the wood merchants. The spot where this market is held, is indicated
by two small houses by the side of the high road, and which serve for
public-houses. The captain had gone down there by one of these
_coulees_.

He had been gone about half-an-hour, and we were on the look-out at the
top of the ravine when we heard a shot. The captain had ordered us not
to stir, and only to come to him when we heard him blow his trumpet. It
was made of a goat's horn, and could be heard a league off, but it gave
no sound, and in spite of our cruel anxiety we were obliged to wait in
silence, with out rifles by our side.

It is nothing to go down these _coulees_; one need only let oneself
glide down, but it is more difficult to get up again; one has to
scramble up by catching hold of the hanging branches of the trees, and
sometimes on all fours, by sheer strength. A whole mortal hour passed
and he did not come, nothing moved in the brushwood. The captain's wife
began to grow impatient; what could he be doing? Why did he not call us?
Did the shot that we had heard proceed from an enemy, and had he killed
or wounded our leader, her husband? They did not know what to think, but
I myself fancied, either that he was dead, or that his enterprise was
successful, and I was merely anxious and curious to know what he had
done.

Suddenly we heard the sound of his trumpet, and we were much surprised
that instead of coming from below, as we had expected, it came from the
village behind us. What did that mean? It was a mystery to us, but the
same idea struck us all, that he had been killed, and that the Prussians
were blowing the trumpet to draw us into an ambush. We therefore
returned to the cottage, keeping a careful look out, with our fingers on
the trigger, and hiding under the branches, but his wife, in spite of
our entreaties, rushed on, leaping like a tigress. She thought that she
had to avenge her husband, and had fixed the bayonet to her rifle, and
we lost sight of her at the moment that we heard the trumpet again, and
a few moments later we heard her calling out to us:

"Come on! come on! he i