midnight
When those troops , later in the day , were driven from the Montmedy plateau , which they had at first carried , Raoul repassed towards the plateau at Villiers , on which the dead lay thickest . On the way he heard a vague report of the panic which had dispersed the Mobiles of whom Enguerrand was in command , and of Enguerrand 's vain attempt to inspirit them . But his fate was not known . There , at midnight , Raoul is still searching among the ghastly heaps and pools of blood , lighted from afar by the blaze from the observatory of Montmartre , and more near at hand by the bivouac fires extended along the banks to the left of the Marne , while everywhere about the field flitted the lanterns of the _ Frere Chretiens _ . Suddenly , in the dimness of a spot cast into shadow by an incompleted earthwork , he observed a small sinister figure perched on the breast of some wounded soldier , evidently not to succour . He sprang forward and seized a hideous-looking urchin , scarcely twelve years old , who held in one hand a small crystal locket , set in filigree gold , torn from the soldier 's breast , and lifted high in the other a long case-knife . At a glance Raoul recognised the holy relic he had given to Enguerrand , and , flinging the precocious murderer to be seized by his assistants , he cast himself beside his brother .