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The road swung past the iron watering trough, turned sharply and, after passing two or three pert cottages and a stately house, old and faded, opened into the wide square. Here pulsed the very life and being of the land. Yonder great bales of cotton, yellow-white in its soiled sacking, piled in lofty, dusty mountains, lay listening for the train that, twice a day, ran out to the greater world.

Two worn bullock-trunks, a leather water-bottle, a tin ice-box, and his pet saddle sewed up in sacking were piled at the door, and the Club secretary's receipt for last month's bill was under his pillow.

The sacking that covered the corpse was smeared In places with black paint; and the Farrier-Sergeant drew attention to this fact. But the Troop Sergeant-Major of E Troop kicked him severely on the shin, and told him that he was undoubtedly drunk. On the Monday following the burial, the Colonel sought revenge on the White Hussars.

In a few moments Paul's bed was made. He threw himself down. The resilient surface of the mats was luxury after the sacking on the scullery stone. Barney Bill performed his summary toilet, blew out the lamp and went to his couch. Presently Paul started up, smitten by a pang straight through his heart. He sprang to his feet.

But when day broke, they all at the same time fell to sacking and plundering the cities, so that, in one hour, a hundred and fifty thousand people were reduced to slavery, and seventy cities plundered; yet from such ruin and destruction as this, there resulted no more than eleven drachmae for each soldier, while all mankind shuddered at this termination of the war, that a whole nation should be cut to pieces to produce such a pitiful present.

The village was being invaded by the Prussians, who were sacking all the houses, and Joseph was followed by three soldiers with villainous faces, who approached my bed with brandished swords. Joseph tried to fool them by saying in German that I was Swiss and an invalid. But paying no attention to him, they began by taking my gold snuff-box, which was on my night-stand.

They pressed on, therefore, through the gloomy streets, guiding their way toward the scene of action by the glare of the fires upon the sky, and by the sounds of the distant tumult and din. They soon found themselves in the midst of scenes of dreadful terror and confusion, the scenes, in fact, which are usually exhibited in the midnight sacking of a city.

The arrival by night at Belgrade, coming from below, is interesting, and one has a vivid recollection ever afterward of swarms of barefooted coal-heavers, clad in coarse sacking, rushing tumultuously up and down a gang-plank, as negroes do when wooding up on a Southern river; of shouting and swaggering Austrian customs officials, clad in gorgeous raiment, but smoking cheap cigars; of Servian gendarmes emulating the bluster and surpassing the rudeness of the Austrians; of Turks in transit from the Constantinople boat to the craft plying to Bosnian river-ports; of Hungarian peasants in white felt jackets embroidered with scarlet thread, or mayhap even with yellow; and of various Bohemian beggars, whose swart faces remind one that he is still in the neighborhood of the East.

Pie took notice, that they had proceeded to menaces unheard of among civilized people, of burning, sacking, and destroying every thing that fell in their way, should the least hesitation be made in executing the convention according to their interpretation."

Our house could not be reached by the front, so we left the buggy in the back yard, and running through the lot without stopping to examine the storeroom and servants' rooms that opened wide, I went through the alley and entered by the front door. Fortunate was it for this record that I undertook to describe the sacking only from Miriam's account.