After that it meant a struggle--not for his own life, for indeed he cared little enough for that--but for the sake of the burden which he was carrying--a burden of infinite preciousness since Crystal's heart and happiness were bound up with it. Maurice de St. Genis clung half inert to him with one hand gripping the saddle-bow, the other clutching Bobby's belt with convulsive tenacity. Bobby himself was only half conscious, dazed with the pain of wounds, the exertion of hoisting that dead weight across his saddle, the deafening noise of whizzing bullets round him, the boring of the frightened horse against its bridle, as it tried to pick its way through the tangled heaps upon the ground. But every moment lessened the danger from stray bullets, and the chance of the bayonet charge from behind. The cries of "Vive l'Empereur!" round that still standing eagle were drowned in the medley and confusion of hundreds of other sounds. Bobby was just able to guide his horse away from the spots where the fighting was most hot and fierce, where Vivian's hussars attacked those two battalions of cuirassiers, where Adam's brigade of artillery turned the flank of the chasseurs and laid the proud bronze eagle low, where Ney and the Old Guard were showing to the rest of the Grand Army how grizzled veterans fought and died. He rode straight up the plateau, however, but well to the right now, picking his way carefully with that blind instinct which the tracked beast possesses and which the hunted man sometimes receives from God. The dead and the dying were less thick here upon the ground. It was here that earlier in the day the Dutch and the Belgians and the Brunswickers had supported the British left, during those terrific cavalry charges which British endurance and tenacity had alone been able to withstand. It was here that Hacke's Cumberland Hussars had broken their ranks and fled, taking to Brussels and thence to Ghent the news of terrific disaster. Bobby's lips were tight set and he snorted like a war-horse when he thought of that--when he thought of the misery and sorrow that must be reigning in Brussels now--and of the consternation at Ghent where the poor old Bourbon King was probably mourning his dead hopes and his vanished throne. In Brussels women would be weeping; and Crystal--forlorn and desolate--would perhaps be sitting at her window watching the stream of fugitives that came in--wounded and exhausted--from the field of battle, recounting tales of a catastrophe which had no parallel in modern times: and Crystal, seeing and hearing this, would think of the man she loved, and believing him to be dead would break her heart with sorrow.