CHAPTER TEN.
ON THE MOVE AGAIN.
"I wonder if she cares about that French fellow still ?" thought Fritz to himself when Madaleine had gone.

"I don't believe she could have felt for him much, from the manner in which she listened when I told her of his death and the way she looked at that ring.

Himmel! Would she receive the news of my being shot in the same fashion, I wonder ?" Fritz, however, could not settle this momentous question satisfactorily to his own mind just then; so he had, consequently, to leave the matter to be decided at that blissful period when everybody thought that "everything would come straight"-- the period to which he had alluded at the interesting instant when his slightly confidential conversation with Madaleine was so inopportunely interrupted by the maladroit entrance of Doctor Carl.

In other words, "when the war should be over!" But, as the worthy disciple of Aesculapius had sapiently remarked on the occasion of his accidental interference with what might have been otherwise a mutual understanding between the two, the war was not over yet.

The halcyon time had not arrived for the sword to be beaten into a ploughshare, nor did there seem much prospect of such a happy contingency in the near immediate future; for, although the contest had already lasted three months--during which a series of terrible engagements had invariably resulted in the defeat of the French--from the commencement of the campaign to the capitulation of Metz, each crushing disaster only seemed to have the effect of nerving the Gallic race to fresh resistance and so prolong the struggle.