completely routed."

I closed my eyes and lay thinking. By degrees it all came back to me;
the Admiral's message, De Courcy's wild charge, the terrible conflict,
the flight of the royalists, and then--! I had a strange
half-consciousness of having been raised from the ground and carried
some distance, but of what had really happened I had no definite
knowledge.

But how came Jacques into the picture? Surely he was not at Roche
Abeille! I opened my eyes and saw him bending over me and looking
eagerly into my face.

"Jacques," I said, "what are you doing here?"

"Nursing you, monsieur," he answered cheerfully. "I got to Rochelle just
after you had started, and followed the army; but the battle was over
when I reached Roche Abeille."

"How did you find me?"

"I went to the Admiral's gentlemen. They said you were killed, and that
your friend Monsieur Bellièvre was distracted, and there was another
gentleman, an Englishman, who looked very unhappy. But we fetched a
surgeon, who patched you up, and we carried you here."

"Where, Jacques?"

"The city of Limoges, monsieur. You are lodged at a comfortable inn, and
now you have talked enough."