examining a corpse under the embankment: The body, still warm, was clothed in a strange uniform, but even when he noticed the spiked helmet lying a few inches further away, he did not realize what had happened.
The colonel sat on his horse a few feet to the left, his eyes sparkling under the crimson képi. Trent heard him reply to an officer: “I can hold it, but another charge, and I won’t have enough men left to sound a bugle.”
“Were the Prussians here?” Trent asked of a soldier who sat wiping the blood trickling from his hair.
“Yes. The hussars cleaned them out. We caught their cross fire.”
“We are supporting a battery on the embankment,” said another.
Then the battalion crawled over the embankment and moved along the lines of twisted rails. Trent rolled up his trousers and tucked them into his woolen socks: but they halted again, and some of the men sat down on the dismantled railroad track. Trent looked for his wounded comrade from the Beaux Arts. He was standing in his place, very pale. The cannonade had become terrific, For a moment the mist lifted. He caught a glimpse of the first battalion motionless on the railroad track in front, of regiments on either flank, and then, as the fog settled again, the drums beat and the music of the bugles began away on the extreme left. A restless movement passed among the troops, the colonel threw up his arm, the drums rolled, and the battalion moved off through the fog. They were near the front now, for the first battalion was firing as it advanced. Ambulances galloped along the base of the embankment to the rear, and
