In Secret

The girl laughed and nodded.

"Be good to them," added Recklow. "They'll get crosses and legions enough but they've got to be well to enjoy them. So keep them in bed until the doctor comes. There are bathrobes and things in my room."

"I understand, sir."

"Right," said Recklow briefly. Then he went to his room, changed his clothes to knickerbockers, his shoes for heavier ones, picked up a rifle, a pair of field-glasses and a gas-mask, slung a satchel containing three days' rations over his powerful shoulders, and went out into the street.

Six Alpinists awaited him. They were peculiarly accoutred, every soldier carrying, beside rifle, haversack and blanket, a flat tank strapped on his back like a knapsack.

Their sergeant saluted; he and Recklow exchanged a few words in whispers. Then Recklow strode away down the Belfort road. And the oddly accoutred Alpinists followed him, their steel-shod soles ringing on the pavement.

Where the Swiss wire bars the frontier no sentinels paced that noon. This was odd. Stranger still, a gap had been cut in the wire.

And into this gap strode Recklow, and behind him trotted the nimble blue-devils, single file; and they and their leader took the ascending path which leads to the Calvary on Mount Terrible.

Standing that same afternoon on the rocks of that grim Calvary, with the weatherbeaten figure of Christ towering on the black cross above them, Recklow and his men gazed out across the tumbled mountains to where the White Shoulder of Thusis gleamed in the sun.

Through their glasses they could sweep the glacier to its terminal moraine. That was not very far away, and the "dust" from the Staubbach could be distinguished drifting out of the green ravine like a windy cloud of steam.

"Allons," said Recklow briefly.

They slept that night in their blankets so close to the Staubbach that its wet, silvery dust powdered them, at times, like snow.

At dawn they were afield, running everywhere over the rocks, searching hollows, probing chasms, creeping into ravines, and always following the torrent which dashed whitely through its limestone canon.

Perhaps the Alpine eagles saw them. But no Swiss patrol disturbed them. Perhaps there was fear somewhere in the Alpine Confederation--fear in high places.

Also it is possible that the bellowing bluster of the guns at Metz may have allayed that fear in high places; and that terror of the Hun was already becoming less deathly among the cantons of a race which had trembled under Boche blackmail for a hundred years. However, for whatever reason it might have been, no Swiss patrols bothered the blue devils and Mr. Recklow.