Gored by the spurs, the poor old horse forgot his wound, and swept through my adversaries, crashing among the frozen willows, reeds, icicles, and rotten ice. For a moment I saw six fierce, dark-visaged fellows, with white coats, red epaulets, and black crossbelts, with their muskets clubbed to beat me down. By a backhanded stroke I slashed one across the face; but at the same moment a bayonet pierced my horse in the bowels, and he received a long wound that ripped open his near hind flank; this was from the musket of the German forester, who levelled it deliberately over a fragment of rock. Maddened by pain and fury, the animal reared wildly back upon its haunches, and then, instead of riding towards the ford, swerved round, and treading some of our assailants under his hoofs, galloped straight along a road which led towards Wildungen, in a direction nearly opposite to that I wished to pursue. Wild, terrified, and dying, with the bit clenched tightly between his teeth, the horse was for a time quite unmanageable, and I had not power to stop him, even if inclined to do so, which I certainly was not, until beyond musket range of the discomfited rascals who guarded the frozen ford. In short, I was borne away by my wounded horse in a manner nearly similar to that which had occurred after one of our skirmishes with the French Hussars in Brittany. I know not why it was, but I felt more excited by this encounter than by the whole day at Minden, and when riding on, seemed still to hear the report of the muskets, and to see them flashing out of the mist before me. Dropping blood and foam upon the snow with every bound, the poor animal, covered with perspiration and enveloped in a steam induced by the frosty air, carried me a few miles almost at racing speed. This, however, slacked suddenly, and on coming to a thicket where a spring (the water of which had a warm or peculiar mineral property, as it was quite unfrozen) flowed freely, I rode for nearly a mile up its bed or course, so that if followed by Arnaud de Pricorbin and other faithful Bretons of the Comte de Bourgneuf, the track of blood so visible in the snow would be lost in the running stream. Perceiving a sequestered cottage upon the slope of a hill, sheltered by some great fir trees, I approached it, and was made welcome by the occupants, who appeared to be only a poor woman and her blind daughter; but they had no fear of me, as my uniform showed them--the former at least--that I was one of those who had come to assist in freeing Westphalia and Waldeck from those unscrupulous invaders, the French.