and even little Bettina chatting so innocently as she trotted along behind him.

In his day the world had changed greatly, old things were passing away and no one knew what was coming.

In America, the Colonies under Washington had won their independence and founded a Republic. In France, there had been a dreadful Revolution, and Louis the Sixteenth and Marie Antoinette had been guillotined. A Corsican soldier first had become France's first consul, and now he was the Emperor Bettina so dreaded. The Holy Roman Empire, whose Emperor had lived in Vienna and ruled Germany, was no more, and France's Emperor, Napoleon, had brought war all over the world. Europe had been fighting during Hans' whole lifetime, and all the small countries had belonged so to first one big one and then another, that it was hard sometimes to exactly know who was one's ruler.

"And now," said Hans aloud, "the French have come into Thuringia, and our troubles begin."

How dreadful these troubles were to be the old man had not even an idea. Little did he think as he walked along with Bettina that before twenty-four hours should have passed, a nation should fall, his own home be no more, and Thuringia blood-stained and overrun with soldiers.

What he did know was that the King of Prussia and the Duke of Brunswick were at Auerstädt, Prince Hohenlohe at Jena, and Napoleon, with the French, in the same neighbourhood.

"But there will be no battle; nonsense," the Prussians had all told him in Jena. "And if there should be, who, tell us, would be victors but the soldiers of Frederick the Great? Was not his army invincible?"

"What matter?" they had answered when someone had ventured to refer to Napoleon and his victories. "He must yield to us Prussians. Why not? The moment that he heard that we were at Jena did he not leave Weimar in haste and retreat to Gera?"

In security they had gone to rest, and while they slept, Napoleon had been planning a surprise for them.

While old Hans was thinking, he suddenly found out what the Emperor had meant by his good-morning.

"Grandfather, oh, grandfather!" in sudden fright called out little Bettina, "Oh, grandfather, what is it?"

Hans' neck had stretched itself forward, his ears were listening, his whole body on a strain, for a roar, deep and full and awful, seemed suddenly to roll through the quiet of the silent, green forest.

"Grandfather!"

The old man turned his face as excited as a boy's.

"Himmel, child, Himmel!" he cried. "The Emperor is saying good-morning. It is cannon you hear. The battle has begun at Jena!"

"Come, come," he continued, "I will not go any farther. Let the trees take care of themselves for this morning. Come, come! What has an old soldier of Frederick the Great to do with fir trees when the cannon are sounding for battle?" And he started quickly in an opposite direction. Bettina had to run so to keep up with him that her breath came in little pants and her heart beat violently. But the roar was so awful she was glad to be running to get away from it.

If that was the voice of Napoleon saying good-morning, no wonder people were afraid of him.

"Grandfather," she panted, "dear grandfather, will the Emperor get my father?"

Hans' glowing face became suddenly sober. He had forgotten his son-in-law, as he forgot everything. He paused in the narrow forest path and raised his old blue eyes to Heaven.

"Let us pray to the good God, my Bettina. He alone can save him in the battle."

For a moment he stood silent, his face gazing upward to the sky which showed now between the fir trees. When he had ended his prayer he went on more slowly and as they walked he told Bettina why the French and the Prussians were fighting. For eight years, he said, the King of Prussia had kept out of all the fighting in Europe, although both Russia and Austria had entreated him to help them. But he declared that his country was too poor, he loved peace, and his people needed quiet.

"And wasn't that right, grandfather?" asked Bettina, who had been told that fighting was wicked.

"Perhaps, dear child, perhaps," the old soldier answered, "but it's a good thing to help our neighbours when they need us. But the King of Prussia is good and saving, too, not at all like the old King who spent so much, and whose ministers brought Prussia to all this trouble."

Then he explained how Napoleon would not let the King of Prussia alone, how he had irritated him with taunts, how he had provoked him with outrages, breaking a solemn promise about the Kingdom of Hanover, quartering ten thousand soldiers on German soil, forming all the South German States into a Confederation of the Rhine to depend upon him, and not upon the Emperor of Austria, or the King of Prussia, and last, and worst of all, defying the laws of nations, he had marched French soldiers across neutral Prussia.

"The King of Prussia is a good man, my Bettina, a very good man," old Hans nodded. "He has saved much money for Prussia, but no man can stand everything, and so now we have war."

Bettina tried to listen, but all she could think of was the dreadful Emperor on his white horse. She could see him again in his green overcoat with its white facings, and feel the gleam of his eyes from beneath his queer hat, and now he was firing cannon on her father. She could not keep back her tears at the thought, and they rolled down her cheeks and splashed to her red dress.

"Will he get us, grandfather, will he get us?" she cried.

"Nein, nein, little one," Hans answered. "That white horse will kick up its heels and start back to Paris, perhaps this evening."

"God be praised!" said little Bettina in the way all the Germans say it. Then, suddenly, she pointed before her.

In an opening in the forest where grew beeches, not evergreens, stood a group of wood gatherers by a rippling stream which babbled through the rocks, ferns dipping down their fronds from its banks to its water. They were all women in short coloured skirts and loose jackets, deep wicker baskets full of faggots strapped on their shoulders, their heads bare and bowed a little because of the sticks, and their faces all frightened and wild looking.

"Herr Lange! Herr Lange!" they called when they saw Hans and little Bettina, "what is it? What is all that roaring?"

"Cannon," said Hans shortly. "The battle, women, has begun at Jena."

Then came a noise of talk and tears and outcrying such as never is heard out of Germany. Louisa had a husband with the Duke; Emma, a son; Grete, a lover; Magdalena, a father.

"Ach Gott! Ach Gott! Ach Gott!" sobbed a woman with sad dark eyes and great shaggy white eyebrows. "The Poles killed my man," she wailed, "the French, my sons; and now——"

"Her grandsons are with the Duke," explained a pink-cheeked woman the rest called Minna.

"Come, come, women," Hans glanced kindly from one weeping face to the other, "who says that your husbands and sons will be killed? They may come home victorious; why not? The Prussians are three to the French one. They are the soldiers of Frederick the Great, and is not your own brave Duke helping them? Come, come, dry your tears. The thing, now, is to get out of this forest. Who knows when the French will begin running and the roads be full of soldiers?"

He started forward with Bettina, and the wood-gatherers in single file left the golden beechwood and, a line of bright colour, moved after him through the deep, green forest, swallowing their tears and struggling against their sobbing. On they went, the cannon roaring and thundering, and, presently, they came out on a highway winding like a white ribbon through the forest's greenness.

They were but out of the path when a quick, noisy sound of hoofs on the road made them start and stop suddenly.

"Soldiers!" cried Hans, and the whole party scattered to the edge of the forest.

They were Prussians, and cavalry, and they acted as escort to a light, closed travelling carriage.

A dash, a