"Is it the end?" he asked.
"I'm afraid so, my boy," said the major.
"My mother wished to give a son to France. Tell her she is victorious!" and he died.
Said another, when the surgeon told him that one leg would have to be amputated,
"Only one, my doctor? Then France has made me a gift of a leg. I was willing to give her both."
The battery passed on through the village. There were no cries of welcome. The women gave food to the soldiers, all silently. With a noble restraint, moreover, none of the women raised a word of blame. The men drove through with hanging heads, downcast, humiliated by the mute reproach in the eyes of the villagers, who knew they were being abandoned to their fate by their own army, which was powerless to aid them. The morrow would bring ruin, brutality, and massacre.
It was late in the evening before the battery halted and Horace took his turn in watering the horses and doing the chores of a driver attached to a gun. Croquier, in a manner attached to the battery, felt he could be of principal service in trying to secure information. When he returned, his expression was full of concern.
"What's happened?" Horace asked sleepily.