and made three strides to the open window. His accustomed ear had caught a
sound which none of us had heard. It was the sharp peremptory note of the
drum beating the alarm. As it came nearer and could no longer be mistaken,
the bright colour went out from poor Minna's cheek and she clung with a
brave touching silence to her sister. In two minutes more Eckenstein had
his helmet on his head and his sword buckled on, and then he turned to say
farewell to his girl ere he left her for the battle. The parting was
silent and brief; but the faces of the two were more eloquent than words.
Poor Minna sat down by the window straining her eyes as Eckenstein,
running at speed, went his way to the rendezvous.

When I got up to the Bellevue the French were streaming in overwhelming
force down the slope of the Spicheren into the intervening valley. It was
a beautiful sight; but I am not going to describe it here. Ere an hour was
over the shells and chassepot bullets were sweeping across the Exercise
Platz, and it was no longer a safe spot for a non-combatant like myself.
Before I got back into the Hagen after paying my bill at the Rheinischer
and fetching away my knapsack, the French guns were on the Exercise Platz.
I heard for the first time the angry screech of the mitrailleuse and saw
the hailstorm of its bullets spattering on the pavement of the bridge.
Somehow or other the whole of our little coterie had found their way into
the Hagen; by a sort of common impulse, I imagine. The landlady was
already in hysterics; the Vogt girls were pale but plucky. Presently the
shells began to fly. The Prussians had a gun or two on the railway
esplanade above us, the fire of which the French began to return fiercely.
Every shell that fell short tumbled in or about the Hagen; and a company
of the Hohenzollerns was drawn up in the street in front of it, in trying
to dislodge which the French fire could not well miss the Hagen and the
houses opposite. A shell burst in the back-yard and the landlady fainted.
Another came crashing in through a first-floor window, and, bursting,