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FRANCE, IN OLD TIMES.
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the siege of Ville-Franche, in Perigord, in the year 1576. He continued to follow the fortunes of the King of Navarre, and to endure without shrinking the dangers and privations of a soldier, with scarcely any intervals of peaceful life, until the battle of Coutras, which was fought on the morning of October 20th, 1587. There he fell covered with wounds, not being thirty years old, and leaving a young widow, with an infant son, to bemoan one more victim of war."

"And was that widow, your grandmother, who used to tell you these sad and true stories?"

"Yes, and she often related the sorrows of her early widowhood. Deeply did she impress on the mind of my father