They took a small, rickety carriage at the station, and before long Raynor was pointing to a mound with an ugly, clumsy-looking lion on it.
“Zat is zee Lion of Belgium,” volunteered the driver. “Eet ees model from French cannon and mark zee spot where zee Prance of Orange was wounded.”
“Is that so?” muttered Raynor. “Well, it looks more like a Newfoundland dog than a lion to me.”
“Eet weigh twenty-eight ton,” volunteered the driver again, pointing with his whip to the lion, close access to which was gained by a steep flight of steps. There are two hundred and twenty-six of these steps, and the boys, on climbing them, were considerably out of breath when they reached the summit and saw the historic plain spread out under their feet.
“I’m disappointed,” confessed Jack frankly. “I thought it was much larger. Why, it doesn’t look like much more than a parade ground!”
“Well, it wasn’t much of a ‘parade’ at the time of the battle, with three hundred thousand men tearing at each other’s throats for five or six hours and leaving fifty thousand dead and wounded on the field,” commented Raynor, who was well up in history.
Then they drove over the road built by Napoleon fifteen years before the battle.
“Might have been a good cavalry road, but it sure is a bone-shaker in this rig,” remarked Jack, and his companion agreed with him. They were much interested in the farm house of Hougomont, or rather its shell-battered ruins. This was the hottest point of the battle. The French assaulted it for hours, but did not succeed in taking it.
The family, who own the house, make a good living selling souvenirs to visitors.
“I’ve been told,” said Jack, with a smile, “that every fall they plant little bullets and souvenirs. The winter snow and spring rains make the crop ready to be plowed up.”