"Cheer!" gasped Lorraine; and the battered Château rang again with frenzied cries of triumph.
The wounded were calling for water, and Jack and Lorraine brought it in bowls. Here and there the bedding and wood-work had caught fire, but the line soldiers knocked it out with their rifle-butts. Whenever Lorraine entered a room they cheered her—the young officers waved their caps, even a dying bugler raised himself and feebly sounded the salute to the colours.
By the light of the candles Jack noticed for the first time that Lorraine wore the dress of the Province—that costume that he had first seen her in—the scarlet skirt, the velvet bodice, the chains of silver. And as she stood loading the rifles in the smoke-choked room, the soldiers saw more than that: they saw the Province itself in battle there—the Province of Lorraine. And they cheered and leaped to the windows, firing frenziedly, crying the old battle-cry of Lorraine: "Tiens ta Foy! Frappe! Pour le Roy!" while the child in the bodice and scarlet skirt stood up straight and snapped back the locks of the loaded chassepots, one by one.
"Once again! For France!" cried Lorraine, as the clamour of the Prussian drums broke out on the hill-side, and the hoarse trumpets signalled from wood to wood.
A thundering cry arose from the Château:
"France!"
The sullen boom of a Prussian cannon drowned it; the house shook with the impact of a shell, bursting in fury on the terrace.
White faces turned to faces whiter still.
"Cannon!"
"Hold on! For France!" cried Lorraine, feverishly.