territory and to return at once. All seemed quiet in the country; nothing
indicated an armed resistance.

But as the Prussians were quietly descending into a little valley
traversed by deep ravines a sharp fusillade made them halt suddenly,
killing twenty of their men, and a company of sharpshooters, suddenly
emerging from a little wood as large as your hand, darted forward with
bayonets at the end of their rifles.

Walter Schnaffs remained motionless at first, so surprised and bewildered
that he did not even think of making his escape. Then he was seized with
a wild desire to run away, but he remembered at once that he ran like a
tortoise compared with those thin Frenchmen, who came bounding along like
a lot of goats. Perceiving a large ditch full of brushwood covered with
dead leaves about six paces in front of him, he sprang into it with both
feet together, without stopping to think of its depth, just as one jumps
from a bridge into the river.

He fell like an arrow through a thick layer of vines and thorny brambles
that tore his face and hands and landed heavily in a sitting posture on a
bed of stones. Raising his eyes, he saw the sky through the hole he had
made in falling through. This aperture might betray him, and he crawled
along carefully on hands and knees at the bottom of this ditch beneath
the covering of interlacing branches, going as fast as he could and
getting away from the scene of the skirmish. Presently he stopped and sat
down, crouched like a hare amid the tall dry grass.

He heard firing and cries and groans going on for some time. Then the
noise of fighting grew fainter and ceased. All was quiet and silent.