Prior to this, as the waggon was driven slowly and tortuously, to avoid mutilating the killed and wounded, who lay thickly everywhere, in literal heaps in some places, in ranks in others, the moon went down, clouds overspread the sky, and, to add to the miseries of the helpless, rain began to fall. In the action of the previous day, the canopy of the waggon in which Charlie Pierrepont lay had been destroyed by a passing shot. No other had been substituted, so there he Jay, with seven others, packed closely side by side, some dying, some actually dead, with the rain of heaven pouring into their open months and eyes. Some there were who stirred restlessly from side to side, constantly requesting their position to be shifted, as the agonies of death came on; and when they died they were lifted from the waggon and laid by the side of the way. To the grim corps of grave-diggers was assigned the duty of noting the neck-labels, and doing what was necessary then! As Charlie lay very still and motionless with eyes closed, sunk indeed into a species of stupor, the unskilled men of the Landwehr concluded that he was dead, and lifting him from the waggon, laid him near the gate of the chateau, and drove off, just as grey dawn began to brighten on the wooded hills that look down, the Moselle, and the great spire of the distant cathedral of Metz. So there he was left to be killed, perhaps outright, by the first vindictive peasant of Lorraine who might be going a-field to his work; but there was too much gunpowder in the air about Metz just then to permit other work to be done than 'the harvest of death.' Now, before those terrible fellows in spike-helmets came into that peaceful part of pleasant Lorraine, where the old chateau lies embosomed among vineyards and apple-bowers--the Lorraine that whilom belonged to the mother of Mary Queen of Scots--it had been the wont and custom of Célandine de Caillé, at the hour of seven every morning, to go to early mass in a little chapel near the highway that leads to Metz. She dared not venture so far now; but by mere force of habit, she was saying the prayers for mass among the dew-drops in the flower-garden, when something caused her to peep out of the front gate, and then she saw---- What? Oh, it could not be! Was this pale, ghastly, sodden, and blood-stained creature the handsome young soldier who, but yesterday morning about the same hour, after being startled by the Uhlan trumpet, had marched away so proudly at the head of his Thuringians, with his silver epaulettes glittering in the sun, and had yet in his havresack--soaked with his own gore--the food so kindly placed there by Célandine? It seemed incredible, yet so it was!