The Weekly Journal. — 1904-12-02 (Hartlepool, Cleveland, England)

CHAPTER VI. The sergeant was right; but it woidS be impossible to follow at length all the vicissitudes of that long day of battle. The result of it was like the result of all the other sorties, in which Trochu played so bravely to the gallery. That is to say, it was all over as soon as the Prussians brought up the reserves. Only there were moments, before the reserves arrived, when inexperienced soldiers like Philip Morgan had all the sensation of having won a glorious victory. So far as his own regiment was concerned, the moment of supreme triumph was the moment when they took a village. " The village to be taken at the point of the bayonet !" was the order; end they all cheered boarselT and dashed on. with various emotions conflicting in their minds. "Close quarters at last!" they said to themselves again and some of them were wondering. as before. bow it would come if one came to close quarter@ with a man who was bigger and stronger than oneself, while most of them rejoiced at the prospect of shedding Prussian blood with their own hands, and enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing that it flowed. So they bellowed Vive In France ! " and came on like ten thousand devils. And that settled it. A few minutes later French and Prussians were facing each other in the village street. But there was no creasing of bayonets. no murderous fighting hand to hand. A few shots were fired, a few dead bodies lay sprawling in the road, and then as the French poured into the street at one end the Prussians poured out of it at the other. And Philip Morgan, with a flesh wound fpom • Prussian bullet in his arm, found his tongue again and roared in his excitement: "I don't call this a battle. I call this a game of hide and seek." For how was he to know that a battle nearly always works out like this? One side is confident and comes on; the other side is friotened and retires. Moral influence settles ths issue of the day, and the oldest soldier cannot remember having seen one regiment withstand another with the bayonet. But yet another analogy was discoverable between the battle and the game of hide and seek. The Prussians had been in such a hurry to retire that some of them had In advertently been left behind, shut up in the houses and cottages that lined either side of the long street. The French were already ransacking the houses and fetching the men out as prisoners. Bo Philip Morgan saw his chance. "Hurrah'" he yelled. "Now I can bring Louise home a Prussian prisoner to play with!' Accident at this moment had carried him a little apart from his comrades; but, catching a glimpse of a blue uniform that had escaped the others, he dashed up a side street and pushed his way violently through the door of a cottage. The door gave with - hang, his feet tripped on the threshold, he fell sprawling upon his face on the floor, and from his lips burst a characteristically English oath. Ile gave himself up for lost. For over him etood a gigantic Prussian officer, with a sword in one hand and a revolver in the other. Would the man run him -through, or blow his brains out, or both? he wondered. And he wondered, too, whether it would hurt very much; and whether Louise—or anyone else —would ever know how he had come to his end. All this within the apace of a few I seconds. Then—