It was a little before daybreak that a small cart, drawn by a mule, drew up by the spot where the wounded dragoon sat, with his shattered arm bound up in his sash, calmly waiting for the death that his sinking strength told could not be far distant. As the peasant approached him, he grasped his sabre in the left hand, resolved on making a last and bold resistance; but the courteous salutation, and the kindly look of the honest countryman, soon showed that he was come on no errand of plunder, while, in the few words of bad French he could muster, he explained his purpose. "No, no, my kind friend," said the officer, "your labor would only be lost on me. It is nearly all over already! A little further on in the field, yonder, where that copse stands, you'll find some poor fellow or other better worth your care, and more like to benefit by it. Adieu!" But neither the farewell, nor the abrupt gesture that accompanied it, could turn the honest peasant from his purpose. There was something that interested him in this very disregard of life, as well as in the personal appearance of the sufferer, and, without further colloquy, he lifted the half-fainting form into the cart, and, disposing the straw comfortably on either side of him, set out homeward. The wounded man was almost indifferent to what happened, and never spoke a word nor raised his head as they went along. About three hours' journey brought them to a large old-fashioned chateau beside the Sambre, an immense straggling edifice which, with a façade of nearly a hundred windows, looked out upon the river. Although now in disrepair and neglect, with ill-trimmed alleys and grass-grown terraces, it had been once a place of great pretensions, and associated with some of the palmiest days of Flemish hospitality. The Chateau d'Overbecque was the property of a certain rich merchant of Antwerp, named D'Aerschot, one of the oldest families of the land, and was, at the time we speak of, the temporary abode of his only son, who had gone there to pass the honeymoon. Except that they were both young, neither of them yet twenty, two people could not easily be found so discrepant in every circumstance and every quality. He the true descendant of a Flemish house, plodding, commonplace, and methodical, hating show and detesting expense. She a lively, volatile girl, bursting with desire to see and be seen, fresh from the restraint of a convent at Bruges, and anxious to mix in all the pleasures and dissipations of the world. Like all marriages in their condition, it had been arranged without their knowledge or consent; circumstances of fortune made the alliance suitable; so many hundred thousands florins on one side were wedded to an equivalent on the other, and the young people were married to facilitate the "transaction."