cuffs removed, and faithfully wrote the
letter, as he had promised to do.

Panna was to be brought before the examining magistrate for the first
time on the following morning. When the jailer opened the door of the
cellar cell, he started back in horror. From the grating in the little
window, high up in the stone wall, dangled a rigid human form. Panna
had hung herself in the night by tying the strings of her skirt
together.

PRINCE AND PEASANT.

The first regiment of dragoon-guards had been waiting idly behind a
screen of low bushes in a shallow hollow for more than an hour, to
receive the order to advance.

It was an interesting point in the spacious battle-field of Metz, and
an important period in that day of August 16th, 1870, which paved the
way for the ultimate prevention of Bazaine's breaking through to
Verdun. By rising in the stirrups, or ascending one of the numerous
shallow ridges which intersected the meadow, a charming view appeared.

A few hundred paces in the rear lay the little village of Vionville
with its slender church-steeple, from whose top floated the flag of the
red cross. Several roads bordered with poplars diverged from the
hamlet, crossing in straight lines the broad, undulating meadow. In
the foreground was a tolerably steep declivity, which at this moment
formed the boundary of the German lines. Northward and southward, as
far as the eye could reach, extended a ravine several hundred feet
wide, at whose bottom a little stream had worn a narrow, winding
channel. The western slope was tolerably gentle, the opposite one, on
the contrary, was somewhat steep. Beyond stretched a bare plain, with
a few church steeples and white buildings, in the distant background.
Here the French were apparently drawn up in considerable force.

On the crest of the German hill several batteries were mounted, which
maintained a rapid fire with bombs. Small bodies of infantry lay on
the ground a short distance in the rear of the artillery. Still
farther back was the regiment of dragoons, each man with his horse's
bridle wound around his arm, waiting with weary, somewhat stolid faces,
for orders. The battle had evidently been at this point some time.
Nearly all the enemy's shells fell into the ravine, few reached the
level ground on the German side, and they, too, thus far, had effected
no special injury. Only a broken gun-carriage and two or three holes
in the earth which, surrounded by a loo