a loud snapping and crackling of their timbers.  And that poor woman, who lay crushed and bleeding in the doorway of the house where her sick boy was, that old man with a bullet in his brain, all that work of ruin and devastation, maddened the few inhabitants who had chosen to end their days in their native village rather than seek safety in Belgium.  Other bourgeois, and workingmen as well, the neatly attired citizen alongside the man in overalls, had possessed themselves of the weapons of dead soldiers, and were in the street defending their firesides or firing vengefully from the windows.

“Ah!” suddenly said Weiss, “the scoundrels have got around to our rear.  I saw them sneaking along the railroad track.  Hark! don’t you hear them off there to the left?”

The heavy fire of musketry that was now audible behind the park of Montivilliers, the trees of which overhung the road, made it evident that something of importance was occurring in that direction.  Should the enemy gain possession of the park Bazeilles would be at their mercy, but the briskness of the firing was in itself proof that the general commanding the 12th corps had anticipated the movement and that the position was adequately defended.

“Look out, there, you blockhead!” exclaimed the lieutenant, violently forcing Weiss up against the wall; “do you want to get yourself blown to pieces?”

He could not help laughing a little at the queer figure of the big gentleman in spectacles, but his bravery had inspired him with a very genuine feeling of respect, so, when his practiced ear detected a shell coming their way, he had acted the part of a friend and placed the civilian in a safer position.  The missile landed some ten paces from where they were and exploded, covering them both with earth and debris.  The citizen kept his feet and received not so much as a scratch, while the officer had both legs broken.

“It is well!” was all he said; “they have sent me my reckoning!”

He caused his men to take him across the sidewalk and place him with his back to the wall, near where the dead woman lay, stretched across her doorstep.  His boyish face had lost nothing of its energy and determination.

“It don’t matter, my children; listen to what I say.  Don’t fire too hurriedly; take your time.  When the time comes for you to charge, I will tell you.”

And he continued to command them still, with head erect, watchful of the movements of the distant enemy.  Another house was burning, directly across the street.  The crash and rattle of musketry, the roar of bursting shells, rent the air, thick with dust and sulphurous smoke.  Men dropped at the corner of every lane and alley; corpses scattered here and there upon the pavement, singly or in little groups, made splotches of dark color, hideously splashed with red.  And over the doomed village a frightful uproar rose and swelled, the vindictive shouts of thousands, devoting to destruction a few hundred brave men, resolute to die.