"Tell us, we beseech, what is the matter ?" After a moments hesitation, the soldier brushed his horny hand across his eyes, and said to the orphans in a faltering voice, whilst he pointed to the old oak beside them: "I shall make you sad, my poor children: and yet what I'm going to tell you has something sacred in it.
Well, eighteen years ago, on the eve of the great battle of Leipsic, I carried your father to this very tree.

He had two sabre-cuts on the head, a musket ball in his shoulder; and it was here that he and I--who had got two thrust of a lance for my share--were taken prisoners; and by whom, worse luck ?--why, a renegado! By a Frenchman--an emigrant marquis, then colonel in the service of Russia--and who afterwards--but one day you shall know all." The veteran paused; then, pointing with his staff to the village of Mockern, he added: "Yes, yes, I can recognize the spot.

Yonder are the heights where your brave father--who commanded us, and the Poles of the Guard--overthrew the Russian Cuirassiers, after having carried the battery.

Ah, my children!" continued the soldier, with the utmost simplicity, "I wish you had, seen your brave father, at the head of our brigade of horse, rushing on in a desperate charge in the thick of a shower of shells!--There was nothing like it--not a soul so grand as he!" Whilst Dagobert thus expressed, in his own way, his regrets and recollections, the two orphans--by a spontaneous movement, glided gently from the horse, and holding each other by the hand, went together to kneel at the foot of the old oak.

And there, closely pressed in each other's arms, they began to weep; whilst the soldier, standing behind them, with his hands crossed on his long staff, rested his bald front upon it.
"Come, come you must not fret," said he softly, when, after a pause of a few minutes, he saw tears run down the blooming cheeks of Rose and Blanche, still on their knees.