hat no ball could touch him unless it passed through her.
Thick and fast the balls were flying, and Madame Ladoinski expected to
receive at any minute a fatal wound, but, although men and women fell
close around her, she remained unhurt.

Slowly but surely Victor's men were driven back on the crowd that was
still struggling to cross the bridge, and whose condition was made
still more awful by the Russian infantry firing on it.

At last some of the regiments fled in disorder before the advancing
enemy, and a troop of horse dashed back within a few yards of Madame
Ladoinski.

'Stand, lancers, stand!' the officer was shouting to his men, and his
voice sent a thrill of joy through Madame Ladoinski, for it was her
husband's.

She was confident of it this time, and almost immediately a strong gust
of wind blew aside the smoke, which hung heavily over the battlefield,
and there, not many yards away, was he whom she had believed to be
dead. In stirring tones he called upon his men to charge once again
into the ranks of the enemy.

'My love, my husband!' Madame Ladoinski called, still sheltering her
boy with her body. 'It is I, it is Aimee.' But the din of warfare and
the roaring of the wind drowned her voice. Again she called, but still
he did not hear.

'Lancers! forward,' he shouted. 'For God and Poland! 'For God and
Poland!' his men answered, and spurring their horses they dashed
forward once more to meet the enemy. Ladoinski had not seen his wife,
and perhaps he would never see her again! Madame Ladoinski wept
quietly; but as night began to draw nigh she determined to cross the
bridge, thinking that she and her boy might as well risk being crushed
on the bridge as being shot by the enemy. But when she saw the crowd
of human beings turned by terror into demons, she decided to remain
where she was.

A few minutes later, as she lay protecting her boy and gazing at the
struggling mob, she saw the largest bridge sway, and almost instantly
it collapsed and fell, with its struggling mass of human beings, into
the icy river. For a few minutes the terrified shrieks of the drowning
men and women were heard even amidst the noise of battle and the
roaring of the wind; then they ceased.

It seemed to Madame Ladoinski that there was to be no end to the
terrors of that day. She felt that she was going out of her mind, and
prayed that she and her boy might die quickly.

Throughout the night Madame Ladoinski lay besid