Aide-de-Camp

"Of course he would," said Jack; "come, then--there is room for three," with an anxious glance at Lorraine.

"Indeed, there is always room for a soldier of France!" cried Lorraine. At the same moment she instinctively laid one hand lightly on Jack's arm. Their eyes spoke for an instant--the generous appeal that shone in hers was met and answered by a response that brought the delicate colour into her cheeks.

"Let me hang on behind," pleaded Georges--"I'm so dirty, you know." But they bundled him into the seat between them, and Jack touched his beribboned whip to the horse's ears, and away they went speeding over the soft forest road in the cool of the fading day; old Pierre, bottle and glass in hand, gaping after them and shaking his gray head.

Jack began to fire volleys of questions at the young hussar as soon as they entered the forest, and poor Georges replied as best he could.

"I don't know very much about it; I was detached yesterday and taken on General Douay's staff. We were at Wissembourg--you know that little town on the Lauter where the vineyards cover everything and the mountains are pretty steep to the north and west. All I know is this: about six o'clock this morning our outposts on the hills to the south began banging way in a great panic. They had been attacked, it seems, by the 4th Bavarian Division, Count Bothmer's, I believe. Our posts fell back to the town, where the 1st Turcos reinforced them at the railroad station. The artillery were at it on our left, too, and there was a most infernal racket. The next thing I saw was those crazy Bavarians, with their little flat drums beating, and their fur-crested helmets all bobbing, marching calmly up the Geisberg. Jack, those fellows went through the vineyards like fiends astride a tempest. That was at two o'clock. The Prussian Crown-Prince rode into the town an hour before; we couldn't hold it--Heaven knows why. That's all I saw--except the death of our general."