"Nein, nein, little one," Hans answered. "That white horse will kick up its heels and start back to Paris, perhaps this evening."
"God be praised!" said little Bettina in the way all the Germans say it. Then, suddenly, she pointed before her.
In an opening in the forest where grew beeches, not evergreens, stood a group of wood gatherers by a rippling stream which babbled through the rocks, ferns dipping down their fronds from its banks to its water. They were all women in short coloured skirts and loose jackets, deep wicker baskets full of faggots strapped on their shoulders, their heads bare and bowed a little because of the sticks, and their faces all frightened and wild looking.
"Herr Lange! Herr Lange!" they called when they saw Hans and little Bettina, "what is it? What is all that roaring?"
"Cannon," said Hans shortly. "The battle, women, has begun at Jena."
Then came a noise of talk and tears and outcrying such as never is heard out of Germany. Louisa had a husband with the Duke; Emma, a son; Grete, a lover; Magdalena, a father.
"Ach Gott! Ach Gott! Ach Gott!" sobbed a woman with sad dark eyes and great shaggy white eyebrows. "The Poles killed my man," she wailed, "the French, my sons; and now——"
"Her grandsons are with the Duke," explained a pink-cheeked woman the rest called Minna.
"Come, come, women," Hans glanced kindly from one weeping face to the other, "who says that your husbands and sons will be killed? They may come home victorious; why not? The Prussians are three to the French one. They are the soldiers of Frederick the Great, and is not your own brave Duke helping them? Come, come, dry your tears. The thing, now, is to get out of this forest. Who knows when the French will begin running and the roads be full of soldiers?"
He started forward with Bettina, and the wood-gatherers in single file left the golden beechwood and, a line of bright colour, moved after him through the deep, green forest, swallowing their tears and struggling against their sobbing. On they went, the cannon roaring and thundering, and, presently, they came out on a highway winding like a white ribbon through the forest's greenness.