We dismount, and half the men take the horses to the nearest house to feed, and, with the others, I walk on. The men say they remember it, but to me it is all a blank. The main events I recollect clearly, but my fall, I find, knocked the last three miles of the ride entirely out of my memory. We go on nearly two miles, and I see nothing that I can recall. Then the road goes down a series of steep descents--so steep I wonder if I ever did ride down them on a runaway horse. As we descend one of these I stop, for before me, as in a dream, stand two trees, and through them I see the fallen trunk and branches of another. I do not expect to see the remains of my horse, for I have already learnt that he staggered bleeding to a house near by, and was seized by the enemy. But this is the spot--I am sure of it. "I think it was farther on, captain," says a corporal, "that I saw your horse down--I think it was _there_, and you must have crawled down to the brook at _that_ place." I will try the corporal's place first, and I walk rapidly down there. I reach the bank of the brook, and my heart fails me, for the brook is dry; its waters cannot hide the sabre now. I look above and below, and there is no sabre to be seen. But this is not the place--there is no log here--I knew it was higher up; so I jump down into the bed of the stream, and walk eagerly up. Above me is a point, and when I turn that point I am certain I shall see the log--and perhaps the sabre. I reach it, and am pushing through the bushes that overhang the brook, when a sergeant calls out, "Here it is." Yes, there is the log, and beneath it, just as I threw it in, lies the sabre. Rusted and broken and never to be drawn again, it is a thousand times more precious than when, burnished and bright, I first received it. I know it is valueless, and that its beauty and its usefulness are gone, but the happiest moment of my soldier-life is when I find my ruined sabre.