The young girl stood waiting for them, and hastened forwards to open the door of a large room, with two windows looking towards the courtyard; it was furnished plainly but with some elegance, and a snow-white bed was prepared for the sufferer. Fritz Deyke, with the help of the old man, laid the wounded officer gently down upon it. "Now, young man!" said his host, looking gravely at the cuirassier, "your officer is safe, and he shall want for nothing that my house can afford,--the house of the Brewer Lohmeier," he added, with a look of dignified satisfaction, "that you may know whose guest you are. Come now, we will take your horse into the stable; and," he continued somewhat confidentially, "whilst you are here, keep others away if you can." They went down stairs, leaving the young girl in the room with the wounded man. She smoothed the pillows, and looked with melancholy interest at the handsome face, pale as death. Some infantry came down the street. "We will find quarters in this street," cried one of them; "see, here is a nice-looking house,--let us go in,--there will be room for us all!" Fritz Deyke came to the door at this moment with the brewer. "Ah! there are cuirassiers here already," cried the infantry man; "is there still room, comrade?" Fritz put his finger to his lips. "A dangerously-wounded officer here," he said; "you must not talk so loud, nor make such a noise in marching." "Then we must go further," said the infantry soldiers; they cast sympathizing looks at the upper windows, and walked on. "Thank you!" said the old brewer, in a friendly voice. Fritz Deyke led his horse through the yard gate to the stable, where he put him with the brewer's four horses. He then asked for a piece of chalk, and wrote in large letters upon the house door: "Dangerously wounded officers." "Now," he cried, "I must go and find a surgeon; take care of my lieutenant, but do not move him!" He was about to hurry away. "Stop," said the brewer, "your surgeons will all be busy at the field hospitals; our surgeon lives close here, he is a clever man, I will fetch him." He went out, and soon returned with a fresh-faced, grey-headed old gentleman, with a very kind expression. He stepped up to the bed, whilst Fritz studied his looks with the greatest anxiety. The surgeon shook his head, he opened one of the closed eye-lids, looked at the eye of the wounded man, and said, "Life is not extinct, whether we can retain it is in God's hand! I must look at the wounds, we must undress him, and you, dear Margaret, get us some warm water and some wine." The young girl hastened away. Fritz carefully cut off the wounded man's clothes and boots. There was a wound in the left breast, another in the shoulder. "This is nothing," said the surgeon, pointing to the shoulder, "a bayonet wound, which will get well of itself; but here--" drawing a probe from a case, he examined the wound in the breast.