Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-10-04

| along the silver thread of the road running
to Verdup, strung like beads with pretty
| villages, each with its church tower-along
| lines of poplars stretching interminably-
| along the busy valley to the north, crammed
with French infantry-from the heights
above it, whence the deadly rattle of a
mitrailleuse battery incessantly sounded.
The attack SO long postponed was develop
ing.
But for the moment Mont Commissioned
Officer Won Ronheim sat there all obliyious
of it.
He was voted a stupid soldier among his
fellows of the regiment A huge. clumslly-
made dreamer, with nothing of martial
smartness about him; mechanical Iout,
who knew his duty to the letter, but who
did it without enthusiasm; a cure, capable
after huge feasts of sausages and immense
draughts of beer, of remaining for half an
hour at the time gazing sentimentally at the
moon. A nice sort of sentimentalist, truly,
with his large red nose turned upward like
some pigs snout; his stubby, untrimmed,
red mustachic; his peepy blue eyes, half
buried between his overhanging eyebrows
and great prominent cheek -bonesl And
yet the fellow, who was capable of danger
ous secretiyeness, was suspected in the regi-
ment of being this very thing. Three
months before the regiment lett Berlin, Won
RonheIm had been seen keeping Quixot1c
guard outside a fashionable perfum-
er's shop, not quarter of a mile
from the Belle Alliance Strasse, in
which a notoriously pretty impudent bag
gage named Rose Sucher served behind the
counter-a baggage whom all non-commis-
stoned officers of the regiment believed to be
no better than she should be, but regarded
at the same time as prize for their masters.
When, therefore, Won Ronheim had been
caught on patrol outside the palace of this
enchantress, candid friends had not been
found wanting TO say unkind things of the
goddess, and to entreat him, for the sake OF
common sense, to desist. But Won Ron
helm had not taken this frankly profered
advice kindly; while to those who limited
rumors adverse to Roses virtue he showed
himself very violent critic indeed. In
duel which followed the expose his sus-
pected courage was rehabilitated. His COM
panions were content to hold him as an idiot
since they were no longer in q position to
consider him a coward; and though they
shrugged their shoulders meaningly when
Rose Sucher's name was mentioned to her
adorer, they mentioned it no more.
And it was Rose Sucher who was the sub
jeet Of Won Ronheim's reyerie on the fated
afternoon of that 10th of August, 1870, as
ne Sdb Ou ldSScu DIOWu H1dF6 uHu6E
shelter of that whitewashed clubhouse on the
right of Mars-la-Tour. Jaded by this long
field day, protracted since 4 in the morning,
his mind grew unconscious of his present
surroundings, his eyes blinded to the panor-
anna open before him of an ever-adyancing
battle, his ears deaf to the constant rain of
Chassepot bullets which rattle about the
clubhouse, where he stood half concealed.
His peepy, pig-like eyes, fixed in senti-
mental stare, pierced far away through the
thickening smoke clouds, which yonder in
the plain began to wrap In the growing
ferocitles of the fight, far away to the quiet
Prussian village, with its quaint old mill, /
its foaning trout stream, its rows of dream |
ing linden trees, its gray church spire,
where Rose Sucher and he had been boy and |
girl together, and as boy and girl played |
the prologue in the growing drama OF their |
love. Rose had then arranged to be an i'm
prisoned Princess in a Castle on the Rhine, |
and he was to be a peerless knight in shin |
ing armor who should rescue herl And this |
forecast Of the future had worked itself out |
by her becoming the beauty of a Berlin per-
fumery shop, aRd he becoming non-com-
missioned officer in the First Prussian
Dragoonsi
"Well, the Life thus early canyassed had