I took my breakfast by the window, watching the German soldiery

cleaning up Morsbronn.

For that wonderful Teutonic administrative

mania was already manifesting itself while ruined houses still smoked;

method replaced chaos, order marched on the heels of the Prussian

rear-guard, which enveloped Morsbronn in a whirlwind of Uhlans, and

left it a silent, blackened landmark in the August sunshine.

Soldiers in canvas fatigue-dress, wearing soft, round, visorless caps,

were removing the débris of the fatal barricade; soldiers with shovel

and hoe filled in the trenches and raked the long, winding street

clean of all litter; soldiers with trowel and mortar were perched on

shot-torn houses, mending chimneys and slated roofs so that their

officers might enjoy immunity from rain and wind and defective flues.

In the court-yards and stables I could see cavalrymen in

stable-jackets, whitewashing walls and out-buildings and ill-smelling

stalls, while others dug shovelfuls of slaked lime from wheelbarrows

and spread it through stable-yards and dirty alleys.

Everywhere quiet, method, order, prompt precision reigned; I even noticed a big,

red-fisted artilleryman tying up tall, blue larkspurs, dahlias, and

phlox in a trampled garden, and he touched the ragged masses of bloom

with a tenderness peculiar to a flower-loving and sentimental people,

whose ultimate ambition is a quart of beer, a radish, and a green leaf

overhead.

At the corners of the walls and blind alleys, placards in French and

German were posted, embodying regulations governing the village under

Prussian military rule. The few inhabitants of Morsbronn who had

remained in cellars during the bombardment shuffled up to read these

notices, or to loiter stupidly, gaping at the Prussian eagles

surmounting the posters.

A soldier came in and started the fire in my fireplace. When he went

out I drew my code-book from my breeches-pocket and tossed it into the

fire. After it followed my commission, my memoranda, and every scrap

of writing. The diamonds I placed in the bosom of my flannel shirt.

Toward one o'clock I heard the shrill piping of a goat-herd, and I saw

him, a pallid boy, clumping along in his wooden shoes behind his two

nanny-goats, while the German soldiers, peasants themselves, looked

after him with curious sympathy.

A little later a small herd of cattle passed, driven to pasture by a

stolid Alsatian, who replied to the soldiers' questions in German

patois and shrugged his heavy shoulders like a Frenchman.

A cock crowed occasionally from some near dunghill; once I saw a cat

serenely following the course of a stucco wall, calm, perfectly

self-composed, ignoring the blandishments of the German soldiers, who

called, "Komm mitz! mitz!" and held out bits of sausage and black

bread.

A German ambulance surgeon arrived to see me in the afternoon. The

Countess was busy somewhere with Buckhurst, who had come with news for

her, and the German surgeon's sharp double rap at the door did not

bring her, so I called out, "Entrez donc!" and he stalked in,

removing his fatigue-cap, which action distinguished him from his

brother officers.

He was a tall, well-built man, perfectly uniformed in his

double-breasted frocked tunic, blue-eyed, blond-bearded, and

immaculate of hand and face, a fine type of man and a credit to any

army.

After a brief examination he sat down and resumed a very bad cigar,

which had been smouldering between his carefully kept fingers.

"Do you know," he said, admiringly, "that I have never before seen

just such a wound. The spinal column is not even grazed, and if, as I

understand from you, you suffered temporarily from complete paralysis

of the body below your waist, the case is not only interesting but

even remarkable."

"Is the superficial lesion at all serious?" I asked.

"Not at all. As far as I can see the blow from the bullet temporarily

paralyzed the spinal cord. There is no fracture, no depression. I do

not see why you should not walk if you desire to."

"When? Now?"

"Try it," he said, briefly.

I tried. Apart from a certain muscular weakness and a great fatigue, I

found it quite possible to stand, even to move a few steps. Then I sat

down again, and was glad to do so.

The doctor was looking at my legs rather grimly, and it suddenly

flashed on me that I had dropped my blanket and he had noticed my

hussar's trousers.

"So," he said, "you are a military prisoner? I understood from the

provost marshal that you were a civilian."

As he spoke Buckhurst appeared at the door, and then sauntered in,

quietly greeting the surgeon, who looked around at the sound of his

footsteps on the stone floor. There was no longer a vestige of doubt

in my mind that Buckhurst was a German agent, or at least that the

Germans believed him to be in their pay. And doubtless he was in

their pay, but to whom he was faithful nobody could know with any

certainty.

"How is our patient, doctor?" he asked.

"Convalescent," replied the doctor, shortly, as though not exactly

relishing the easy familiarity of this pale-eyed gentleman in gray.

"Can he travel to-day?" inquired Buckhurst, without apparent

interest.

"Before he travels," said the officer, "it might be well to find out

why he wears part of a hussar uniform."

"I've explained that to the provost," observed Buckhurst, examining

his well-kept finger-nails. "And I have a pass for him also--if he is

in a fit condition to travel."

The officer gave him a glance full of frank dislike, adjusted his

sabre, pulled on his white gloves, and, bowing very slightly to me,

marched straight out of the room and down the stairs without taking

any notice of Buckhurst. The latter looked after the officer, then his

indifferent eyes returned to me. Presently he sat down and produced a

small slip of paper, which he very carefully twisted into a cocked

hat.

"I suppose you doubt my loyalty to France," he said, intent on his

bit of paper.

Then, logically continuing my rôle of the morning, I began to upbraid

him for a traitor and swear that I would not owe my salvation to him,

and all the while he was calmly transforming his paper from one toy

into another between deft, flat fingers.

"You are unjust and a trifle stupid," he said. "I am paid by Prussia

for information which I never give. But I have the entre of their

lines. I do it for the sake of the Internationale. The Internationale

has a few people in its service ... And it pays them well."

He looked squarely at me as he said this. I almost trembled with

delight: the man undervalued me, he had taken me at my own figure, and

now, holding me in absolute contempt, he was going to begin on me.

"Scarlett," he said, "what does the government pay you?"

I began to protest in a torrent of patriotism and sentimentality. He

watched me impassively while I called Heaven to witness and proclaimed

my loyalty to France, ending through sheer breathlessness in a

maundering, tearful apotheosis where mixed metaphors jostled each

other--the government, the Emperor, and the French flag, consecrated

in blood--and finally, calling his attention to the fact that twenty

centuries had once looked down on this same banner, I collapsed in my

chair and gave him his chance.

He took it. With subtle flattery he recognized in me a powerful arm of

a corrupt Empire, which Empire he likened to the old man who rode

Sindbad the Sailor. He admitted my noble loyalty to France, pointing

out, however, that devotion to the Empire was not devotion to France,

but the contrary. Skilfully he pictured the unprepared armies of the

Empire, huddled along the frontier, seized and rent to fragments, one

by one; adroitly he painted the inevitable ending, the armies that

remained cut off and beaten in detail.

And as I listened I freely admitted to myself that I had undervalued

him; that he was no crude Belleville orator, no sentimental

bathos-peddling reformer, no sansculotte with brains ablaze, squalling

for indiscriminate slaughter and pillage; he was a cool student in

crime, taking no chances that he was not forced to take, a calm,

adroit, methodical observer, who had established a theory and was

carefully engaged in proving it.

"Scarlett," he said, in English, "let us come to the point. I am a

mercenary American; you are an American mercenary, paid by the French

government. You care nothing for that government or for the country;

you would drop both to-day if your pay ceased. You and I are

outsiders; we are in the world to watch our chances. And our chance is

here."

He unfolded the creased bit of paper and spread it out on his knees,

smoothing it thoughtfully.

"What do I care for the Internationale?" he asked, blandly. "I am

high in its councils; Karl Marx knows less about the Internationale

than do I. As for Prussia and France--bah!--it's a dog-fight to me,

and I lack even the interest to bet on the German bull-dog.

"You will know me better some day, and when you do you will know that

I am a man who has determined to get rich if I have to set half of

France against the other half and sack every bank in the Empire.

"And now the time is coming when the richest city in Europe will be

put to the sack. You don't believe it? Yet you shall live to see Paris

besieged, and you shall live to see Paris surrender, and you shall

live to see the Internationale rise up from nowhere, seize the

government by the throat, and choke it to death under the red flag of

universal--ahem!... license"--the faintest sneer came into his pallid

face--"and every city of France shall be a commune, and we shall pass

from city to city, leisurely, under the law--our laws, which we will

make--and I pity the man among us who cannot place his millions in the

banks of England and America!"

He began to worry the creased bit of paper again, stealthy eyes on the

floor.

"The revolt is as certain as death itself," he said. "The Society of

the Internationale honeycombs Europe--your police archives show you

that--and I tell you that, of the two hundred thousand soldiers of

the national guard in Paris to-day, ninety per cent. are

ours--ours, soul and body. You don't believe it? Wait!

"Yet, for a moment, suppose I am right? Where are the government

forces? Who can stop us from working our will? Not the fragments of

beaten and exhausted armies! Not the thousands of prisoners which you

will see sent into captivity across the Rhine! What has the government

to lean on--a government discredited, impotent, beaten! What in the

world can prevent a change, an uprising, a revolution? Why, even if

there were no such thing as the Internationale and its secret Central

Committee--to which I have the honor to belong"--and here his sneer

was frightful--"I tell you that before a conquering German army had

recrossed the Rhine this land of chattering apes would be tearing one

another for very want of a universal scape-goat.

"But that is exactly where we come into the affair. We find the

popular scape-goat and point him out--the government, my friend. And

all we have to do is to let the mob loose, stand back, and count

profits."

He leaned forward in his chair, idly twisting his crumpled bit of

paper in one hand.

"I am not fool enough to believe that our reign will last," he said.

"It may last a month, two months, perhaps three. Then we leaders will

be at one another's throats--and the game is up! It's always so--mob

rule can't last--it never has lasted and never will. But the prudent

man will make hay before the brief sunshine is ended; I expect to

economize a little, and set aside enough--well, enough to make it pay,

you see."

He looked up at me quietly.

"I am perfectly willing to tell you this, even if you used your

approaching liberty to alarm the entire country, from the Emperor to

the most obscure scullion in the Tuileries. Nothing can stop us now,

nothing in the world can prevent our brief reign. Because these

things are certain, the armies of France will be beaten--they are

already beaten. Paris will hold out; Paris will fall; and with Paris

down goes France! And as sure as the sun shall rise on a conquered

people, so sure shall rise that red spectre we call the

Internationale."

The man astonished me. He put into words a prophecy which had haunted

me from the day that war was declared--a prophetic fear which had

haunted men higher up in the service of the Empire--thinking men who

knew what war meant to a country whose government was as rotten as its

army was unprepared, whose political chiefs were as vain, incompetent,

ignorant, and weak as were the chiefs of its brave army--an army

riddled with politics, weakened by intrigue and neglect--an army used

ignobly, perverted, cheated, lied to, betrayed, abandoned.

That, for once, Buckhurst spoke the truth as he foresaw it, I did not

question. That he was right in his infernal calculations, I was

fearsomely persuaded. And now the game had advanced, and I must

display what cards I had, or pretended to have.

"Are you trying to bribe me?" I blurted out, weakly.

"Bribe you," he repeated, in contempt. "No. If the prospect does not

please you, I have only to say a word to the provost marshal."

"Wouldn't that injure your prospects with the Countess?" I said, with

fat-brained cunning. "You cannot betray me and hope for her

friendship."

He glanced up at me, measured my mental capacity, then nodded.

"I can't force you that way," he admitted.

"He's bound to get to Paradise. Why?" I wondered, and said, aloud:

"What do you want of me?"

"I want immunity from the secret police, Mr. Scarlett."

"Where?"

"Wherever I may be."

"In Morbihan?"

"Yes."

"In Paradise?"

"Yes."

I was silent for a moment, then, looking him in the eye, "What do I

gain?"

Ah, the cat was out now. Buckhurst did not move, but I saw the muscles

of his face relax, and he drew a deep, noiseless breath.

"Well," he said, coolly, "you may keep those diamonds, for one

thing."

Presently I said, "And for the next thing?"

"You are high-priced, Mr. Scarlett," he observed.

"Oh, very," I said, with that offensive, swaggering menace in my

voice which is peculiar to the weak criminal the world over.

So I asserted myself and scowled at him and told him I was no fool and

taunted him with my importance to his schemes and said I was not born

yesterday, and that if Paris was to be divided I knew what part I

wanted and meant to stand no nonsense from him or anybody.

All of which justified the opinion he had already formed of me, and

justified something else, too--his faith in his own eloquence, logic,

and powers of persuasion. Not that I meant to make his mistake and

undervalue him; he was an intelligent, capable, remarkable

criminal--with the one failing--an overconfident contempt of all

men.

"There is one thing I want to ask you," said I. "Why do you desire

to go to Paradise?"

He did not answer me at once, and I studied his passionless profile as

he gazed out of the window.

"Well," he said, slowly, "I shall not tell you."

"Why not?" I demanded.

"--But I'll say this," he continued. "I want you to come to Paradise

with me and that fool of a woman. I want you to report to your

government that you are watching the house in Paradise, and that you

are hoping to catch me there."

"How can I do that?" I asked. "As soon as the government catches the

Countess de Vassart she will be sent across the frontier."

"Not if you inform your government that you desire to use her and the

others as a bait to draw me to Paradise."

"Oh, that's it, is it?" I asked, thoughtfully.

"Yes," said Buckhurst, "that's it."

"And you do not desire to inform me why you are going to stay in

Paradise?"

"Don't you think you'll be clever enough to find out?" he asked, with

a sneer.

I did think so; more than that, I let him see that I thought so, and

he was contented with my conceit.

"One thing more," I said, blustering a little, "I want to know

whether you mean any harm to that innocent girl?"

"Who? The Countess? What do you mean? Harm her? Do you think I waste

my thoughts on that little fool? She is not a factor in

anything--except that just now I'm using her and mean to use her house

in Paradise."

"Haven't you stripped her of every cent she has?" I asked. "What do

you want of her now?" And I added something about respect due to

women.

"Oh yes, of course," he said, with a vague glance at the street

below. "You need not worry; nobody's going to hurt her--" He suddenly

shifted his eyes to me. "You haven't taken a fancy to her, have

you?" he asked, in faint disgust.

I saw that he thought me weak enough for any sentiment, even a noble

one.

"If you think it pays," he muttered, "marry her and beat her, for

all I care; but don't play loose with me, my friend; as a plain matter

of business it won't pay you."

"Is that a threat?" I asked, in the bullying tone of a born coward.

"No, not a threat, a plain matter of profit and loss, a simple

business proposition. For, suppose you betray me--and, by a miracle,

live to boast of it? What is your reward? A colonelcy in the Military

Police with a few thousand francs salary, and, in your old age, a

pension which might permit you to eat meat twice a week. Against that,

balance what I offer--free play in a helpless city, and no one to

hinder you from salting away as many millions as you can carry off!"

Presently I said, weakly, "And what, once more, is the service you

ask of me?"

"I ask you to notify the government that you are watching Paradise,

that you do not arrest the Countess and Dr. Delmont because you desire

to use them as a bait to catch me."

"Is that all?"

"That is all. We will start for Paris together; I shall leave you

before we get there. But I'll see you later in Paradise."

"You refuse to tell me why you wish to stay at the house in

Paradise?"

"Yes,... I refuse. And, by-the-way, the Countess is to think that I

have presented myself in Paris and that the government has pardoned

me."

"You are willing to believe that I will not have you arrested?"

"I don't ask you to promise. If you are fool enough to try it--try

it! But I'm not going to give you the chance in Paris--only in

Paradise."

"You don't require my word of honor?"

"Word of--what? Well--no;... it's a form I can dispense with."

"But how can you protect yourself?"

"If all the protection I had was a 'word of honor,' I'd be in a

different business, my friend."

"And you are willing to risk me, and you are perfectly capable of

taking care of yourself?"

"I think so," he said, quietly.

"Trusting to my common-sense as a business man not to be fool enough

to cut my own throat by cutting yours?" I persisted.

"Exactly, and trusting to a few other circumstances, the details of

which I beg permission to keep to myself," he said, with a faint

sneer.

He rose and walked to the window; at the same moment I heard the sound

of wheels below.

"I believe that is our carriage," he said. "Are you ready to start,

Mr. Scarlett?"

"Now?" I exclaimed.

"Why not? I'm not in the habit of dawdling over anything. Come, sir,

there is nothing very serious the matter with you, is there?"

I said nothing; he knew, of course, the exact state of the wound I had

received, that the superficial injury was of no account, that the

shock had left me sound as a silver franc though a trifle weak in the

hips and knees.

"Is the Countess de Vassart to go with us?" I asked, trying to find a

reason for these events which were succeeding one another too quickly

to suit me.

He gave me an absent-minded nod; a moment later the Countess entered.

She had mended her black crêpe gown where I tore it when I hung in

the shadow of death under the battlements of La Trappe. She wore black

gloves, a trifle shabby, and carried a worn satchel in her hands.

Buckhurst aided me to rise, the Countess threw my hussar jacket over

my shoulders and buttoned it; I felt the touch of her cool, little

fingers on my hot, unshaved throat.

"I congratulate you on your convalescence," she said, in a low voice.

"Lean on me, monsieur."

My head swam; hips and knees were without strength; she aided me down

the stairway and out into the pale sunshine, where stood the same

mud-splashed, rusty vehicle which had brought us hither from La

Trappe.

The Countess had only a satchel and a valise; Buckhurst's luggage

comprised a long, flat, steel-bound box, a satchel, and a parcel. I

had nothing. My baggage, which I had left in Morsbronn, had without

doubt been confiscated long since; my field-glasses, sabre, and

revolver were gone; I had only what clothes I was wearing--a dirty,

ragged, gray-blue flannel shirt, my muddy jacket, scarlet

riding-breeches, and officer's boots. But in one of the hip-pockets of

my breeches I carried a fortune in diamonds.

As I stood beside the carriage, wondering how I was going to get in, I

felt an arm slip under my neck and another slide gently under my

knees, and Buckhurst lifted me. Beneath the loose, gray coat-sleeves

his bent arms were rigid as steel; his supple frame straightened; he

moved a step forward and laid me on the shabby cushions.

The Countess looked at me, turned and glanced up at her

smoke-blackened house, where a dozen Prussian soldiers leaned from the

lower windows smoking their long porcelain pipes and the provost

marshal stood in the doorway, helmeted, spurred, immaculate from

golden cheek-guard to the glittering tip of his silver scabbard. An

Uhlan, dismounted, stood on guard below the steps, his lance at a

"present," the black-and-white swallow-tailed pennon drooping from

the steel point.

The Countess bent her pretty head under its small black hat; the

provost's white-gloved hand flew to his helmet peak.

"Fear nothing, madame," he said, pompously. "Your house and its

contents are safe until you return. This village is now German soil."

The Countess looked at him steadily, gravely.

"I thank you, monsieur, but frontiers are not changed in a day."

But she was mistaken. Alsace henceforth must be written Elsass, and

the devastated province called Lothringen was never again to be

written Lorraine.

The Countess stepped into the carriage and took her place beside me;

Buckhurst followed, seating himself opposite us, and the Alsatian

driver mounted to the box.

"Your safe-conduct carries you to the French outposts at Saverne,"

said the provost, dryly. "If there are no longer French outposts at

Saverne, you may demand a visé for your pass and continue south to

Strasbourg."

Buckhurst half turned towards the driver. "Allez," he said, quietly,

and the two gaunt horses moved on.

There was a chill in the white sunshine--the first touch of autumn.

Not a trace of the summer's balm remained in the air; every tree on

the mountain outlines stood out sharp-cut in the crystalline light;

the swift little streams that followed the road ran clear above

autumn-brown pebbles and golden sands.

Distant beachwoods were turning yellow; yellow gorse lay like patches

of sunshine on the foot-hills; oceans of yellow grain belted the

terraced vineyards. Here and there long, velvety, black strips cut the

green and gold, the trail of fire which had scarred the grain belts;

here and there pillars of smoke floated, dominating blue woodlands,

where the flames of exploding shells had set the forest afire.

Already from the plateau I could see a streak of silver reflecting the

intense blue sky--the Rhine, upon whose westward cliffs France had

mounted guard but yesterday.

And now the Rhine was lost, and the vast granite bastions of the

Vosges looked out upon a sea of German forests. Above the Col du

Pigeonnier the semaphore still glistened, but its signals now

travelled eastward, and strange flags fluttered on its invisible

halliards. And every bridge was guarded by helmeted men who halted us,

and every tunnel was barred by mounted Uhlans who crossed their lances

to the ominous shout: "Wer da? On ne basse bas!" The Vosges were

literally crawling with armed men!

Driving slowly along the base of the hills, I had glimpses of rocky

defiles which pierced the mountain wall; and through every defile

poured infantry and artillery in unbroken columns, and over every

mountain pass streamed endless files of horsemen. Railroad tunnels

were choked with slowly moving trains piled high with artillery;

viaducts glistened with helmets all moving westward; every hillock,

every crag, every height had its group of tiny dark dots or its

solitary Uhlan.

Very far away I heard cannon--so far away that the hum of the

cannonade was no louder than the panting of our horses on the white

hill-road, and I could hear it only when the carriage stopped at

intervals.

"Do we take the railroad at Saverne?" I asked at last. "Is there a

railroad there?"

Buckhurst looked up at me. "It is rather strange that a French

officer should not know the railroads in his own country," he said.

I was silent. I was not the only officer whose shame was his

ignorance of the country he had sworn to defend. Long before the

war broke out, every German regimental officer, commissioned and

non-commissioned, carried a better map of France than could be

found in France itself. And the French government had issued to us

a few wretched charts of Germany, badly printed, full of gross

errors, one or two maps to a regiment, and a few scattered about

among the corps headquarters--among officers who did not even know the

general topography of their own side of the Rhine.

"Is there a railroad at Saverne?" I repeated, sullenly.

"You will take a train at Strasbourg," replied Buckhurst.

"And then?"

"And then you go to Avricourt," he said. "I suppose at least you

know where that is?"

"It is on the route to Paris," said I, keeping my temper. "Are we

going direct to Paris?"

"Madame de Vassart desires to go there," he said, glancing at her

with a sort of sneaking deference which he now assumed in her

presence.

"It is true," said the Countess, turning to me. "I wish to rest for

a little while before I go to Point Paradise. I am curiously tired of

poverty, Monsieur Scarlett," she added, and held out her shabby gloves

with a gesture of despair; "I am reduced to very little--I have

scarcely anything left,... and I am weak enough to long for the scent

of the winter violets on the boulevards."

With a faint smile she touched the bright hair above her brow, where

the wind had flung a gleaming tendril over her black veil.

As I looked at her, I marvelled that she had found it possible to

forsake all that was fair and lovely in life, to dare ignore caste, to

deliberately face ridicule and insult and the scornful anger of her

own kind, for the sake of the filthy scum festering in the sinkholes

of the world.

There are brave priests who go among lepers, there are brave

missionaries who dispute with the devil over the souls of half-apes in

the Dark Continent. Under the Cross they do the duty they were bred

to.

But she was bred to other things. Her lungs were never made to breathe

the polluted atmosphere of the proletariat, yelping and slavering in

their kennels; her strait young soul was never born for communion with

the crooked souls of social pariahs, with the stunted and warped

intelligence of fanatics, with the crippled but fierce minds which

dominated the Internationale.

Not that such contact could ever taint her; but it might break her

heart one day.

"You will think me very weak and cowardly to seek shelter and comfort

at such a time," she said, raising her gray eyes to me. "But I feel

as though all my strength had slipped away from me. I mean to go back

to my work; I only need a few days of quiet among familiar

scenes--pleasant scenes that I knew when I was young. I think that if

I could only see a single care-free face--only one among all those

who--who once seemed to love me--"

She turned her head quickly and stared out at the tall pines which

fringed the dusty road.

Buckhurst blinked at her.

* * * * *

It was late in the afternoon when the last Prussian outpost hailed us.

I had been asleep for hours, but was awakened by the clatter of

horses, and I opened my eyes to see a dozen Uhlans come cantering up

and surround our carriage.

After a long discussion with Buckhurst and a rigid scrutiny of our

permit to pass the lines, the slim officer in command viséd the order.

One of the troopers tied a white handkerchief to his lance-tip,

wheeled his wiry horse, and, followed by a trumpeter, trotted off

ahead of us. Our carriage creaked after them, slowly moving to the

summit of a hill over which the road rose.

Presently, very far away on the gray-green hill-side, I saw a bit of

white move. The Uhlan flourished his lance from which the handkerchief

fluttered; the trumpeter set his trumpet to his lips and blew the

parley.

One minute, two, three, ten passed. Then, distant galloping sounded

along the road, nearer, nearer; three horsemen suddenly wheeled into

view ahead--French dragoons, advancing at a solid gallop. The Uhlan

with the flag spurred forward to meet them, saluted, wheeled his

horse, and came back.

Paid mercenary that I was, my heart began to beat very fast at sight

of those French troopers with their steel helmets bound with

leopard-hide and their horsehair plumes whipping the breeze, and their

sun-bronzed, alert faces and pleasant eyes. I had had enough of the

supercilious, near-sighted eyes of the Teuton.

As for the young Countess, she sat there smiling, while the clumsy

dragoons came rattling up, beaming at my red riding-breeches, and all

saluting the Countess with a cheerful yet respectful swagger that

touched me deeply as I noted the lines of hunger in their lean jaws.

And now the brief ceremony was over and our rusty vehicle moved off

down the hill, while the Uhlans turned bridle and clattered off,

scattering showers of muddy gravel in the rising wind.

The remains of our luncheon lay in a basket under our seat--plenty of

bread and beef, and nearly a quart of red wine.

"Call the escort--they are starving," I said to Buckhurst.

"I think not," he said, coolly. "I may eat again."

"Call the escort!" I repeated, sharply.

Buckhurst looked up at me in silence, then glanced warily at the

Countess.

A few moments later the gaunt dragoons were munching dry bread as they

rode, passing the bottle from saddle to saddle.

We were ascending another hill; the Countess, anxious to stretch her

limbs, had descended to the road, and now walked ahead, one hand

holding her hat, which the ever-freshening wind threatened.

Buckhurst bent towards me and said: "My friend, your suggestion that

we deprive ourselves to feed those cavalrymen was a trifle peremptory

in tone. I am wondering how much your tone will change when we reach

Paris."

"You will see," said I.

"Oh, of course I'll see," he said,... "and so will you."

"I thought you had means to protect yourself," I observed.

"I have. Besides, I think you would rather keep those diamonds than

give them up for the pleasure of playing me false."

I laughed in a mean manner, which reassured him. "Look here," said I,

"if I were to make trouble for you in Paris I'd be the most besotted

fool in France, and you know it."

He nodded.

And so I should have been. For there was something vastly more

important to do than to arrest John Buckhurst for theft; and before I

suffered a hair of his sleek, gray head to come to harm I'd have hung

myself for a hopeless idiot. Oh no; my friend John Buckhurst had such

colossal irons in the fire that I knew it would take many more men as

strong as he to lift them out again. And I meant to know what those

irons were for, and who were the gentlemen to aid him lift them. So

not only must Buckhurst remain free as a lively black cricket in a

bog, but he must not be frightened if I could help it.

And to that end I leered at him knowingly, and presently bestowed a

fatuous wink upon him.

It was unpleasant for me to do this, for it implied that I was his

creature; and, in spite of the remorseless requirements of my

profession, I have an inborn hatred of falsehood in any shape. To lie

in the line of duty is one of the disagreeable necessities of certain

professions; and mine is not the only one nor the least respectable.

The art of war is to deceive; strategy is the art of demonstrating

falsehood plausibly; there is nothing respectable in the military

profession except the manual--which is now losing importance in the

eyes of advanced theorists. All men are liars--a few are unselfish

ones.

"You have given me your word of honor," said Buckhurst.

"Have I?" I had not, and he knew it. I hoped I might not be forced

to.

"Haven't you?" asked Buckhurst.

"You sneered at my word of honor," I said, with all the spite of a

coward; "now you don't get it."

He no longer wanted it, but all he said was: "Don't take unnecessary

offence; you're smart enough to know when you're well off."

* * * * *

I dozed towards sunset, waking when the Countess stepped back into the

carriage and seated herself by my side. Then, after a little, I slept

again. And it was nearly dark when I was awakened by the startling

whistle of a locomotive. The carriage appeared to be moving slowly

between tall rows of poplars and telegraph-poles; a battery of

artillery was clanking along just ahead. In the dark southern sky a

luminous haze hung.

"The lights of Strasbourg," whispered the Countess, as I sat up,

rubbing my hot eyes.

I looked for Buckhurst; his place was empty.

"Mr. Buckhurst left us at the railroad crossing," she said.

"Left us!"

"Yes! He boarded a train loaded with wounded.... He had business to

transact in Colmar before he presented himself to the authorities in

Paris.... And we are to go by way of Avricourt."

So Buckhurst had already begun to execute his programme. But the

abrupt, infernal precision of the man jarred me unpleasantly.

In the dark I felt cautiously for my diamonds; they were safe in my

left hip-pocket.

* * * * *

The wind had died out, and a fine rain began to filter down through a

mist which lay over the flat plain as we entered the suburbs of

Strasbourg.

Again and again we were halted by sentinels, then permitted to proceed

in the darkness, along deserted avenues lighted by gas-jets burning in

tall bronze lamp-posts through a halo of iridescent fog.

We passed deserted suburban villas, blank stretches of stucco walls

enclosing gardens, patches of cabbages, thickets of hop-poles to which

the drenched vines clung fantastically, and scores of abandoned

houses, shutters locked, blinds drawn.

High to the east the ramparts of the city loomed, set at regular

distances with electric lights; from the invisible citadel rockets

were rising, spraying the fog with jewelled flakes, crumbling to

golden powder in the starless void above.

Presently our carriage stopped before a tremendous mass of masonry

pierced by an iron, arched gate, through which double files of

farm-wagons were rolling, escorted by customs guards and marines.

"No room! no room!" shouted the soldiers. "This is the Porte de

Pierre. Go to the Porte de Saverne!"

So we passed on beneath the bastions, skirting the ramparts to the

Porte de Saverne, where, after a harangue, the gate guards admitted

us, and we entered Strasbourg in the midst of a crush of vehicles. At

the railroad station hundreds of cars choked the tracks; loaded

freight trains stalled in the confusion, trains piled with ammunition

and provisions, trains crowded with horses and cattle and sheep,

filling the air with melancholy plaints; locomotives backing and

whistling, locomotives blowing off deafening blasts of steam; gongs

sounding, bells ringing, station-masters' trumpets blowing; and, above

all, the immense clamor of human voices.

The Countess and our Alsatian driver helped me to the platform, I

looked around with dread at the throng, being too weak to battle for a

foothold; but the brave Alsatian elbowed a path for me, and the

Countess warded off the plunging human cattle, and at length I found

myself beside the cars where line-soldiers stood guard at every ten

paces and gendarmes stalked about, shoving the frantic people into

double files.

"Last train for Paris!" bawled an official in gilt and blue; and to

the anxious question of the Countess he shook his head, saying,

"There is no room, madame; it is utterly impossible--pardon, I cannot

discuss anything now; the Prussians are signalled at Ostwald, and

their shells may fall here at any moment."

"If that is so," I said, "this lady cannot stay here!"

"I can't help that!" he shouted, starting off down the platform.

I caught the sleeve of a captain of gendarmerie who was running to

enter a first-class compartment.

"Eh--what do you want, monsieur?" he snapped, in surprise. Then, as I

made him a sign, he regarded me with amazement. I had given the

distress signal of the secret police.

"Try to make room for this lady in your compartment," I said.

"Willingly, monsieur. Hasten, madame; the train is already moving!"

and he tore open the compartment door and swung the Countess to the

car platform.

I suppose she thought I was to follow, for when the officer slammed

the compartment door she stepped to the window and tried to open it.

"Quick!" she cried to the guard, who had just locked the door; "help

that officer in! He is wounded--can't you see he is wounded?"

The train was gliding along the asphalt platform; I hobbled beside the

locked compartment, where she stood at the window.

"Will you unlock that door?" said the Countess to the guard. "I wish

to leave the train!"

The cars were rolling a little faster than I could move along.

The Countess leaned from the open window; through the driving rain her

face in the lamp-light was pitifully white. I made a last effort and

caught up with her car.

"A safe journey, madame," I stammered, catching at the hand she held

out and brushing the shabby-gloved fingers with my lips.

"I shall never forgive this wanton self-sacrifice," she said,

unsteadily. Then the car rolled silently past me, swifter, swifter,

and her white face faded from my sight. Yet still I stood there,

bareheaded, in the rain, while the twin red lamps on the rear car grew

smaller and smaller, until they, too, were shut out in the closing

curtains of the fog.

As I turned away into the lighted station a hospital train from the

north glided into the yard and stopped. Soldiers immediately started

carrying out the wounded and placing them in rows on mattresses ranged

along the walls of the passenger depot; sisters of charity, hovering

over the mutilated creatures, were already giving first aid to the

injured; policemen kept the crowd from trampling the dead and dying;

gendarmes began to clear the platforms, calling out sharply, "No more

trains to-night! Move on! This platform is for government officials

only!"

Through the scrambling mob a file of wounded tottered, escorted by

police; women were forced back and pushed out into the street, only to

be again menaced by galloping military ambulances arriving,

accompanied by hussars. The confusion grew into a tumult; men

struggled and elbowed for a passage to the platforms, women sobbed and

cried; through the uproar the treble wail of terrified children broke

out.

Jostled, shoved, pulled this way and that, I felt that I was destined

to go down under the people's feet, and I don't know what would have

become of me had not a violent push sent me against the door of the

telegraph office. The door gave way, and I fell on my knees, staggered

to my feet, and crept out once more to the platform.

The station-master passed, a haggard gentleman in rumpled uniform and

gilt cap; and as he left the office by the outer door the heavy

explosion of a rampart cannon shook the station.

"Can you get me to Paris?" I asked.

"Quick, then," he muttered; "this way--lean on me, monsieur! I am

trying to send another train out--but Heaven alone knows! Quick, this

way!"

The glare of a locomotive's headlight dazzled me; I made towards it,

clinging to the arm of the station-master; the ground under my feet

rocked with the shock of the siege-guns. Suddenly a shell fell and

burst in the yard outside; there was a cry, a rush of trainmen, a

gendarme shouting; then the piercing alarm notes of locomotives,

squealing like terrified leviathans.

The train drawn up along the platform gave a jerk and immediately

moved out towards the open country, compartment doors swinging wide,

trainmen and guards running alongside, followed by a mob of frenzied

passengers, who leaped into empty compartments, flinging satchels and

rugs to the four winds. Crash! A shell fell through the sloping roof

of the platform and blew up. Through the white cloud and brilliant

glare I saw a porter, wheeling boxes and trunks, fall, buried under an

avalanche of baggage, and a sister of charity throw up her arms as

though to shield her face from the fragments.

A car, doors swinging wide, glided past me; I caught the rail and fell

forward into a compartment. The cushions of the seats were afire, and

a policeman was hammering out the sparks with naked fists.

I was too weak to aid him. Presently he hurled the last burning

cushion from the open door and leaped out into the train-yard, where

red and green lamps glowed and the brilliant flare of bursting shells

lighted the fog. By this time the train was moving swiftly; the car

windows shook with the thunder from the ramparts under which we were

passing; then came inky darkness--a tunnel--then a rush of mist and

wind from the open door as we swept out into the country.

Passengers clinging to the platforms now made their way into the

compartment where I lay almost senseless, and soon the little place

was crowded, and somebody slammed the door.

Then the flying locomotive, far ahead, shrieked, and the train leaped,

rushing forward into the unknown. Blackness, stupefying blackness,

outside; inside, unseen, the huddled passengers, breathing heavily

with sudden stifled sobs, or the choked, indrawn breath of terror; but

not a word, not a quaver of human voices; peril strangled speech as

our black train flew onward through the night.




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