The New Magdalen

IT was a dark night. The rain was pouring in torrents.

Late in the evening a skirmishing party of the French and a skirmishing

party of the Germans had met, by accident, near the little village of

Lagrange, close to the German frontier. In the struggle that followed,

the French had (for once) got the better of the enemy. For the time, at

least, a few hundreds out of the host of the invaders had been forced

back over the frontier. It was a trifling affair, occurring not long

after the great German victory of Weissenbourg, and the newspapers took

little or no notice of it.

Captain Arnault, commanding on the French side, sat alone in one of the

cottages of the village, inhabited by the miller of the district. The

Captain was reading, by the light of a solitary tallow-candle, some

intercepted dispatches taken from the Germans. He had suffered the wood

fire, scattered over the large open grate, to burn low; the red embers

only faintly illuminated a part of the room. On the floor behind him lay

some of the miller's empty sacks. In a corner opposite to him was the

miller's solid walnut-wood bed. On the walls all around him were the

miller's colored prints, representing a happy mixture of devotional and

domestic subjects. A door of communication leading into the kitchen of

the cottage had been torn from its hinges, and used to carry the men

wounded in the skirmish from the field. They were now comfortably laid

at rest in the kitchen, under the care of the French surgeon and the

English nurse attached to the ambulance. A piece of coarse canvas

screened the opening between the two rooms in place of the door. A

second door, leading from the bed-chamber into the yard, was locked; and

the wooden shutter protecting the one window of the room was carefully

barred. Sentinels, doubled in number, were placed at all the outposts.

The French commander had neglected no precaution which could reasonably

insure for himself and for his men a quiet and comfortable night.

Still absorbed in his perusal of the dispatches, and now and then making

notes of what he read by the help of writing materials placed at his

side, Captain Arnault was interrupted by the appearance of an intruder

in the room. Surgeon Surville, entering from the kitchen, drew aside

the canvas screen, and approached the little round table at which his

superior officer was sitting.

"What is it?" said the captain, sharply.

"A question to ask," replied the surgeon. "Are we safe for the night?"

"Why do you want to know?" inquired the captain, suspiciously.

The surgeon pointed to the kitchen, now the hospital devoted to the

wounded men.

"The poor fellows are anxious about the next few hours," he replied.

"They dread a surprise, and they ask me if there is any reasonable hope

of their having one night's rest. What do you think of the chances?"