Nearest the crest of the hill immortalized by the great conflict, in advance of but in touch with the regular dead lines of the Guard, a little group, friend and foe, lay intermingled. There was a young officer of the Fifty-second infantry, one of Colborne's. He was conscious but suffering frightfully from mortal wounds. One side of his face where he had been thrown into the mud was covered with a red compound of earth and blood; his bright head was dabbled with the same hideous mixture. Blood frothed out of his mouth as he breathed. He murmured from time to time a woman's name. "Water," was sometimes the sputtering syllable that came from him.

His left hand clutched uneasily at his breast, where his torn uniform showed a gaping wound. But his right hand was still. The arm was broken, paralyzed, but the fingers of his right hand were tightly closed around a broken blue staff and next to his cheek, the blood-stained one, and cold against it, was a French Eagle. He had seized that staff in the heat of battle and in the article of death he held it.

At the feet of the English officer lay a French officer wearing the insignia of a Colonel of the Guard. He was covered with wounds, bayonet thrusts, a saber-slash, and was delirious. Although helpless, he was really in much better case than the young Englishman. He, too, in his delirium muttered a woman's name.

They spoke different tongues, these two. They were born in different lands. They were children of the same God, although one might have doubted it, but no one could mistake the woman's name. For there Frank Yeovil and Jean Marteau, incapable of doing each other any further harm, each thought of the same woman.

Did Laure d'Aumenier back in England waiting anxiously for news of battle, fearing for one of those men, hear those piteous, broken murmurs of a woman's name—her own?

Around these two were piled the dead. Marteau had seized the Eagle. Yes, he and a few brave men had stayed on the field when the great Ney, raging like a madman, and seeking in vain the happy fortune of a bullet or sword-thrust, had been swept away, and on him had fallen Yeovil with another group of resolute English, and together they had fought their little battle for the Eagle. And Marteau had proved the Englishman's master. He had beaten him down. He had shortened his sword to strike when he recognized him. Well, the battle was over, the Eagle was lost, the Emperor was a fugitive, hope died with the retreating Guard, the Empire was ended. Marteau might have killed him, but to what end?

"For your wife's sake," he cried, lowering his sword, and the next minute he paid for his mercy, for the other English threw themselves upon him.

But Frank Yeovil did not get off scot free. There was one lad who had followed Marteau, who had marched with the Guard, who had no compunctions of conscience whatever, and with his last pistol Pierre gave the reeling Englishman the fatal shot. Yes, Pierre paid too. They would certainly have spared him, since he was only a boy, but maddened by the death of their officer, half a dozen bayonets were plunged into his breast.

Thither the next day came Sir Gervaise Yeovil, who had been with the Duke at the Duchess of Richmond's famous ball in Brussels. Young Frank had left that ball at four o'clock in the morning, according to order, only to find that later orders had directed the army to march at two and that his baggage had gone. He had fought that day in pumps and silk stockings which he had worn at the ball; dabbled, gory, muddy, they were now.

Sir Gervaise Yeovil was an old friend of the Duke of Wellington. The Iron Duke, as they called him, was nevertheless very tender-hearted that morning. He told the Baronet that his son was somewhere on the field. Colonel Colborne of the Fifty-second had marked him in the charge, but that was all. Neither Vivian nor Vandeleur could throw any light on the situation. There were twenty thousand of the allied armies on that field and thirty thousand French.

"My God," said Sir Gervaise, staring along the line of the French retreat, "what is so terrible as a defeat?"

"Nothing," said the Duke gravely. Then looking at the nearer hillside he added those tremendous words which epitomized war in a way in which no one save a great modern captain has ever epitomized it. "Nothing," he said slowly, "unless it be a victory."

They found the Guard. That was easy. There they lay in lines where they had fallen; the tall bearskins on their heads, the muskets still clasped in their hands. There, too, they found young Yeovil at last. They revived him. Someone sought to take the Eagle from him, but with a sudden accession of strength he protested against it.

"Father," he whispered to the old man bending over him, his red face pale and working, "mine."

"True," said the Duke. "He captured it. Let him keep it."

"O God!" broke out the Baronet. "Frank! Can nothing be done?"

"Nothing. Stop." His lips moved, his father bent nearer. "Laure——" he whispered.

"Yes, yes, what of her?"

"That Frenchman she loved——"

"Marteau?"

The young Englishman closed his eyes in assent.

"He could have killed me but spared—for her—he—is there," he faltered presently.

"There is life in this Frenchman yet," said one of the surgeons, looking up at the moment.

"My Lord!" said old Sir Gervaise Yeovil, starting up, choking down a sob and endeavoring to keep his voice steady. "My boy yonder——"

"Yes," said the Duke, "a brave lad."

"He's—— It is all up with him. You will let me take him back to England, and—the Frenchman and the Eagle?"

"Certainly. I wish to God it had never happened, Yeovil," went on the soldier. "But it had to be. Bonaparte had to be put down, the world freed. And somebody had to pay."

"I thank God," said the old man, "that my boy dies for his King and his country and for human liberty."

"Nor shall he die in vain," said the soldier.

Frank Yeovil died on the vessel Sir Gervaise chartered to carry him and Marteau and some other wounded officers of his acquaintance back to England. They did not bury him at sea. At his earnest request they took him back to his own land to be laid with his ancestors, none of whom had spent th............