As Jacques said this, he arose, and moved slowly away as though he would not be questioned further. His mind, too, seemed full of its own crowding memories, for he looked completely absorbed in thought, and never noticed my presence for a considerable time. At last he appeared to have decided some doubtful issue within himself, and said, "Come, sir, let us stroll into the shade of the wood, and I'll tell you in a few words the cause of the poor colonel's ruin--for ruin it is! Even were all the injustice to be revoked to-morrow, the wreck of _his_ heart could never be repaired." We walked along, side by side, for some time, before Jacques spoke again, when he gave me, in brief and simple words, the following sorrowful story. It was such a type of the age, so pregnant with the terrible lessons of the time, that, although not without some misgivings, I repeat it here as it was told to myself, premising that however scant may be the reader's faith in many of the incidents of my own narrative--and I neither beg for his trust in me, nor seek to entrap it--I implore him to believe that what I am now about to tell was a plain matter of fact, and, save in the change of one name, not a single circumstance is owing to imagination. CHAPTER XLIV. AN EPISODE OF '94. When the French army fell back across the Sambre, after the battle of Mons, a considerable portion of the rear, who covered the retreat, were cut off by the enemy, for it became their onerous duty to keep the allied forces in check, while the Republicans took measures to secure and hold fast the three bridges over the river. In this service many distinguished French officers fell, and many more were left badly wounded on the field; among the latter was a young captain of dragoons, who, with his hand nearly severed by a sabre cut, yet found strength enough to crawl under cover of a hedge, and there lie down in the fierce resolve to die where he was, rather than surrender himself as a prisoner.