Dusk fell on them as they mounted again; on their left the little river had been companion of their journey since leaving the last range of hills, but now they turned away to the right and ascended slightly from the valley. Suddenly the ground fell away from before them, and they went down past three houses to a railway station and goods yard, in which stacks of forage and other stores, covered by waterproof sheets, lay with only one man to guard them, one who was unsuspecting of surprise and easily captured. Lenoir left here all his men with the exception of Pierre and l'Anglais, and these he took with him away out to the other side of the village. Beyond the houses the officer and his two men sat down on the ground, waiting. At last the moon rose, and they espied a tent almost concealed among trees. Within the tent they found a corporal and a squad of men belonging to a squadron of train, all asleep. Lenoir wakened the corporal and informed him that he and all his party were captured, and that the stores under their charge were subject to the orders of the officer commanding the blue army. That was the end of the task. With his little squad of scouts Lenoir had captured the unguarded stores of the red force, and had thus rendered ineffective anything that they might accomplish in the matter of field operations. Theoretically the red force was beaten on its first day in the field, but in actual fact the stores went up from the captured base to the red army, as if no capture had been accomplished, for it would not do to go to the expense of moving out two army corps from barracks for the purpose of manoeuvres, and then cancelling the manoeuvres because a cavalry patrol had, by means of hard riding and good cross-country judgment, achieved a theoretical victory. Practice has shown that in real war a chance for such an achievement as that of Lenoir's patrol does not occur in one out of a thousand situations, and in actual war, also, no commander would be so foolish as to leave his chief supplies in charge of a corporal and squad of men of a squadron of train. Adequate protection is always afforded to lines of communication by an attacking force in war.