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The straggling rays of the watery moon now obscured by snow-scud, now falling on him faintly, could not aid him in reading even if he dared avert his eyes from his front. But Hans had come to know the value of the little gray volume; and while he lay in the Feldwache waiting for his spell of sentry go, he had learnt by heart the following prayer

Metz, crouching behind Saint-Quentin and Les Bottes, turned her anxious eyes from Thionville to Saint-Julien and back to where MacMahon's three rockets should have starred the sky; and what she saw was the Red Prince riding like a fiery spectre from east to west; what she saw was the spiked helmets of the Feldwache and the sodded parapets of Longeau.

Be Thou with me and strengthen me, life and soul, that in frost, in heat, in rain, in snow, in all storms, I may retain my strength and return in health to the Feldwache. So I will praise Thy name and laud Thy protection. Amen. It is the evening of the 2nd of December. Duerot has tried his hardest to sup in Lagny, and has been balked by German valour. But not without terrible loss.

He is on the Feldwache in the forest of Bondy before Raincy, and his turn comes to go on the uttermost sentry post. As the snow-drift blows to one side he can see the French watch-fires close by him in Bondy; nearer still he sees the three stones and the few spadefuls of earth behind which, as he knows, is the French outpost sentry confronting him.