her her haggard hussar. He
looked as pale as the midnight dragoon who came to disturb Leonora.
Pauline would have screamed, but that her cry would have called her
masters, and discovered her friend. She stifled her scream, then, and
leading her hero into the kitchen, gave him beer, and the choice bits
from the dinner, which Jos had not had the heart to taste. The hussar
showed he was no ghost by the prodigious quantity of flesh and beer
which he devoured--and during the mouthfuls he told his tale of
disaster.

His regiment had performed prodigies of courage, and had withstood for
a while the onset of the whole French army. But they were overwhelmed
at last, as was the whole British army by this time. Ney destroyed each
regiment as it came up. The Belgians in vain interposed to prevent the
butchery of the English. The Brunswickers were routed and had
fled--their Duke was killed. It was a general debacle. He sought to
drown his sorrow for the defeat in floods of beer.

Isidor, who had come into the kitchen, heard the conversation and
rushed out to inform his master. "It is all over," he shrieked to Jos.
"Milor Duke is a prisoner; the Duke of Brunswick is killed; the British
army is in full flight; there is only one man escaped, and he is in the
kitchen now--come and hear him." So Jos tottered into that apartment
where Regulus still sate on the kitchen table, and clung fast to his
flagon of beer. In the best French which he could muster, and which
was in sooth of a very ungrammatical sort, Jos besought the hussar to
tell his tale. The disasters deepened as Regulus spoke. He was the
only man of his regiment not slain on the field. He had seen the Duke
of Brunswick fall, the black hussars fly, the Ecossais pounded down by
the cannon. "And the --th?" gasped Jos.

"Cut in pieces," said the hussar--upon which Pauline cried out, "O my
mistress, ma bonne petite dame," went off fairly into hysterics, and
filled the house with her screams.

Wild with terror, Mr. Sedley knew not how or where to seek for safety.
He rushed from the kitchen back to the sitting-room, and cast an
appealing look at Amelia's door, which Mrs. O'Dowd had closed and
locked in his face; but he remembered how scornfully the latter had
received him, and after pausing and listening for a brief space at the
door, he left it, and resolved to go into the street, for the first
time that day. So, seizing a candle, he looked about for his
gold-laced