I should be very much puzzled now to tell you all the villages we passed between Jametz and Rothalp. All that country between Metz, Montmedy and Verdun was swarming with cavalry and infantry, living at the expense of the people, and keeping them, as it were, in a net, to eat them as they were wanted. The troops of the line, and especially the gunners, kept around the fortresses; the rest, the Landwehr in masses, occupied even the smallest hamlets and made requisitions everywhere. In one little village between Jametz and Damvillers, we heard on our right a sharp rattle of musketry along a road, and George said to me: "Behind there our battalion is engaged. All I hope is that the brave commander who talked of shooting us may get a ball through him, and your corporal too." The village people standing at their doors said, "It is the francs-tireurs!" And joy broke out in every countenance, especially when an old man ran up from the path by the cemetery, crying: "Two carriages, full of wounded, are coming--two large Alsacian wagons; they are escorted by hussars." We had just stopped at a grocer's shop in the market square, and were asking the woman who kept this little shop if there was no watchmaker in the place--for my cousin wished to sell his watch, which he had hidden beneath his shirt, since we had left Droulingen--and the woman was coming down the steps to point out the spot, when the old man began to cry, "Here come the Alsacian carts!" Immediately, without waiting for more, we set off at a run to the other end of the village; but near to a little river, whose name I cannot remember, just over a clump of pollard willows, we caught the glitter of a couple of helmets, and this made us take a path along the river-side, which was then running over in consequence of the heavy rains. We went on thus a considerable distance, having sometimes the water up to our knees. In about half an hour we were getting out of these reed beds, and had just caught sight, above the hill on our left, of the steeple of another village, when a cry of "Wer da!"* stopped us short, near a deserted hut two or three hundred paces from the first house. At the same moment a Landwehr started out of the empty house, his rifle pointed at us; and his finger on the trigger. * "Who goes there?" George seeing no means of escape, answered, "Guter freund!"* * "A friend." "Stand there," cried the German: "don't stir, or I fire." We were, of course, obliged to stop, and only ten minutes afterward, a picket coming out of the village to relieve the sentinel, carried us off like vagrants to the mayoralty-house. There the captain of the Landwehr questioned us at great length as to who we were, whence we came, the cause of our departure, and why we had no passes.