hour till we got under shelter. After a hot walk of several miles, we
reached the Hotel Till in the village of Duttweiler. After all the French,
although they might have done so, did not occupy Saarbruecken; and towards
evening our friends came dropping into the Hotel Till, singly or in pairs.
Kuester and George brought the Vogt sisters out in a waggon--it was
surprising to see the coolness and composure of the girls. By nightfall we
were all reunited, except one unfortunate fellow who had been slightly
wounded and whom a Saarbruecken doctor had kindly received into his house.

On the 6th August came the Prussian repossession of Saarbruecken and the
desperate storm of the Spicheren. The 40th was the regiment to which was
assigned the place of honour in the preliminary recapture of the Exercise
Platz height. Kameke rode up the winding road to the Bellevue; then came
the march across the broad valley and after much bloodshed the final storm
of the Spicheren, in which the 40th occupied about the left centre of the
Prussian advance. Three times did the blue wave surge up the green steep,
to be beaten back three times by the terrible blast of fire that crashed
down upon it from above. Yet a fourth time it clambered up again, and this
time it lipped the brink and poured over the intrenchment at the top. But
I am not describing the battle.

When it was over or at least when it had drifted away across the farther
plateau, I followed on in the broad wake of dying and dead which the
advance had left. The familiar faces of the Hohenzollerns were all around
me; but either still in death or writhing in the torture of wounds. About
the centre of the valley lay the genial Hauptmann von Krehl, more silent
than ever now, for a bullet had gone right through that red head of his
and he would never more quaff of the Niersteiner; neither would Lieutenant
von Klipphausen ever again stir the blood of the sons of the Fatherland
with the _Wacht am Rhein_; he lay dead close by the first spur of the