German valley, were flowing north and west to join the Prussian
eagles.

But even love of country seemed denied to Ulrich of the dreamy eyes.
His wheelwright's business had called him to a town far off. He had
been walking all the day. Towards evening, passing the outskirts of a
wood, a feeble cry for help, sounding from the shadows, fell upon his
ear. Ulrich paused, and again from the sombre wood crept that weary
cry of pain. Ulrich ran and came at last to where, among the wild
flowers and the grass, lay prone five human figures. Two of them were
of the German Landwehr, the other three Frenchmen in the hated uniform
of Napoleon's famous scouts. It had been some unimportant "affair of
outposts," one of those common incidents of warfare that are never
recorded--never remembered save here and there by some sad face
unnoticed in the crowd. Four of the men were dead; one, a Frenchman
was still alive, though bleeding copiously from a deep wound in the
chest that with a handful of dank grass he was trying to staunch.

Ulrich raised him in his arms. The man spoke no German, and Ulrich
knew but his mother tongue; but when the man, turning towards the
neighbouring village with a look of terror in his half-glazed eyes,
pleaded with his hands, Ulrich understood, and lifting him gently
carried him further into the wood.

He found a small deserted shelter that had been made by
charcoal-burners, and there on a bed of grass and leaves Ulrich laid
him; and there for a week all but a day Ulrich tended him and nursed
him back to life, coming and going stealthily like a thief in the
darkness. Then Ulrich, who had thought his one desire in life to be
to kill all Frenchmen, put food and drink into the Frenchman's