Hope for him had already become reality. Brussels was the half-way halt to the uttermost heights of his ambition. Fortune, the Emperor's gratitude, the woman he loved, all waited for him there. He reached the city just as that distant horizon in the west was lit up by a streak of brilliant crimson from the fast sinking sun: just when--had he but known it!--on the crest of Mont Saint Jean, Wellington had waved his hat over his head and given the heroic British army--exhausted, but undaunted--the order for a general charge; just when the Grand Army, finally checked in its advance, had first set up the ominous call that was like the passing-bell of its dying glory: "Sauve qui peut!" III "Sauve qui peut!" Bobby Clyffurde heard the cry too through the fast gathering shadows of unconsciousness that closed in round his wearied senses, and, as a film that was so like the kindly veil of approaching Death spread over his eyes, he raised them up just once to that vivid crimson glow far out in the west, and on the winged chariot of the setting sun he sent up his last sigh of gratitude to God. All day he had called for Death--all day he had wooed her there where bullets and grape-shot were thickest--where her huge scythe had been most busily at work. Sons of fond mothers, husbands, sweethearts that were dearly loved, brothers that would be endlessly mourned, lives that were more precious than any earthly treasures--the ghostly harvester claimed them all with impartial cruelty. And he--desolate and lonely--with no one greatly to care if he came back or no--with not a single golden thread of hope to which he might cling, without a dream to brighten the coming days of dreariness--with a life in the future that could hold nothing but vain regrets, Bobby had sought Death twenty times to-day and Death had resolutely passed him by. But now he was grateful for that: he was thankful that he had lived just long enough to see the sunset, just long enough to take part in that last glorious charge in obedience to Wellington's inspiring command: "Up, guards, and at them!" he was glad to have lived just long enough to hear the "Sauve qui peut!" to know that the Grand Army was in full retreat, that Blücher had come up in time, that British pluck and British endurance had won the greatest victory of all times for Britain's flag and her national existence.