saw him, and although the artillery did not fire on him, he received a brisk volley of single shots without, however, being hit, and he reached the first group of wounded.  A hasty glance showed him only stiffened limbs and stony faces.  He went on searching, and then he heard close by him a feeble voice saying:  “Here!” and a hand was stretched out to him.  With one bound he was near the wounded man, and recognized the captain.

“Are you seriously hurt?” he asked, while as quickly as possible he raised the wounded man on his shoulder, who answered almost inaudibly: 

“A ball through the chest, and one in my foot.  I am in awful pain.”

As Wilhelm went slowly back with his burden, he looked so fantastic in the growing darkness, that the French did not know what to make of the strange apparition, and began to fire afresh.  “Wilhelm, however, reached the sandpit safely, where friendly arms were stretched out to help him, and relieve him of the captain.  He stayed to breathe a moment, and then said: 

“If any one will come with me, we might bring in one or two more poor devils who have still life in them.”

He was soon surrounded by five or six figures, and he was going with them to search for wounded in the rain of balls which was falling, when with a sudden cry of pain he sank backward.  A ball had struck his right leg.  His volunteers put him back into the sandpit, and no one thought any more either of the colors or the wounded who lay out there under the fire from the factory.  At this moment too an adjutant brought the command to retreat, which the remains of the wearied battalion slowly began, to obey under the command of a sub-officer.

The captain, who could not be moved, was left in a peasant’s hut in the village of Messigny, but as Wilhelm’s injury was only a flesh wound, and he was merely exhausted from loss of blood, he was sent with the others to Tonnerre, where he arrived the next day, after a journey of great suffering.

The schoolhouse was turned into an infirmary, many of the rooms holding nearly a hundred and twenty beds.  Wilhelm was put into a little room, which he shared with one French and two German officers.  A Sister of Mercy and a male volunteer nurse attended to the patients in this as well as in the four neighboring rooms.  Wilhelm exercised the same influence here as he did everywhere, by the power of his pale thin face, which had not lost all its beauty; by the sympathetic tones of his voice, and above all by the nobility of his quiet, patient nature.  His fellow-sufferers were attracted to him as if he were a magnet.  Some occupants of the room gave up their cigars when they noticed that he did not smoke.  The Frenchman declared immediately that he was le Prussien le plus charmant he had ever seen.  The Sister took him to her motherly heart, and the doctor was constantly at his bedside.  He was able to give him a great deal of attention without neglecting his duty, as there were few very severe cases under his care, and no new ones came in—­Paris had surrendered and a truce was declared.