The outposts blazed away at each other until dusk. One of the last shots killed a soldier on patrol--he was the first man killed in the war. The poor fellow was hit full on the forehead, and he must have died instantaneously. His comrades carried in the corpse on a stretcher improvised of their rifles. The drops of blood pit-patted on the road as they carried him past, the moonbeams falling on the pale dead face. Quite a lad he was, with the down hardly grown on his face--likely enough a mother might have been thinking of and praying for her lad, little knowing that he was lying stark and cold, waiting for a grave. The slow days passed in a strange bewildering calm, unbroken save by the trivial skirmishes occurring in the course of the constant reconnaissances and patrolling parties. Frossard lay passive on the Spicheren save for the “potato-reconnaissances” his hungry soldiers occasionally made, sending out a screen of skirmishers to the front while the working parties dug potatoes with great industry. Brave old Major von Pestel of the Lancers, who commanded the handful of men holding Saarbrück, had received an order from Moltke to evacuate a place which was regarded as untenable; but von Pestel pleaded successfully to be left where he was, on the undertaking that he would not compromise his little command, but would fall back as soon as serious danger threatened. Meanwhile he was never out of the saddle. Every afternoon he would come cantering over the Bellevue height with his cheery greeting and his shout, “Come along, English sir! I go to draw de shoots of de enemy!” The French marksmen expended a considerable quantity of ammunition on the worthy major; but the range was long and they never succeeded in hitting him, although certainly he gave them plenty of chances.