"You will catch cold here in the rain," he said, abruptly.

"You also, Jack."

They walked a few steps towards the house, then stopped and looked at each other.

"You are drenched," he said; "you must go to your room and lie down."

"I will—if you wish," she answered.

He drew her rain-cloak around her, buttoned the cape and high collar, and settled the hood on her head. She looked up under her pointed hood.

"Do you care so much for me?" she asked, listlessly.

"Will you give me the right—always—forever?"

"Do you mean that—that you love me?"

"I have always loved you."

Still she looked up at him from the shadow of her hood.

"I love you, Lorraine."

One arm was around her now, and with the other hand he held both of hers.

She spoke, her eyes on his.

"I loved you once. I did not know it then. It was the first night there on the terrace—when they were dancing. I loved you again—after our quarrel, when you found me by the river. Again I loved you, when we were alone in the Chateau and you came to see me in the library."

He drew her to him, but she resisted.

"Now it is different," she said. "I do not love you—like that. I do not know what I feel; I do not care for that—for that love. I need something warmer, stronger, more kindly—something I never have had. My childhood is gone, Jack, and yet I am tortured with the craving for it; I want to be little again—I want to play with children—with young girls; I want to be tired with pleasure and go to bed with a mother bending over me. It is that—it is that that I need, Jack—a mother to hold me as you do. Oh, if you knew—if you knew! Beside my bed I feel about in the dark, half asleep, reaching out for the mother I never knew—the mother I need. I picture her; she is like my father, only she is always with me. I lie back and close my eyes and try to think that she is there in the dark—close—close. Her cheeks and hands are warm; I can never see her eyes, but I know they are like mine. I know, too, that she has always been with me—from the years that I have forgotten—always with me, watching me that I come to no harm—anxious for me, worrying because my head is hot or my hands cold. In my half-sleep I tell her things—little intimate things that she must know. We talk of everything—of papa, of the house, of my pony, of the woods and the Lisse. With her I have spoken of you often, Jack. And now all is said; I am glad you let me tell you, Jack. I can never love you like—like that, but I need you, and you will be near me, always, won't you? I need your love. Be gentle, be firm in little things. Let me come to you and fret. You are all I have."

The intense grief in her face, the wide, childish eyes, the cold little hands tightening in his, all these touched the manhood in him, and he answered manfully, putting away from himself all that was weak or selfish, all that touched on love of man for woman:

"Let me be all you ask," he said. "My love is of that kind, also."

"My darling Jack," she murmured, putting both arms around his neck.

He kissed her peacefully.

"Come," he said. "Your shoes are soaking. I am going to take charge of you now."

When they entered the house he took her straight to her room, drew up an arm-chair, lighted the fire, filled a foot-bath with hot water, and, calmly opening the wardrobe, pulled out a warm bath-robe. Then, without the slightest hesitation, he knelt and unbuttoned her shoes.

"Now," he said, "I'll be back in five minutes. Let me find you sitting here, with your feet in that hot water."

Before she could answer, he went out. A thrill of comfort passed through her; she drew the wet stockings over her feet, shivered, slipped out of skirt and waist, put on the warm, soft bath-robe, and, sinking back in the chair, placed both little white feet in the foot-bath.

"I am ready, Jack," she called, softly.

He came in with a tray of tea and toast and a bit of cold chicken. She followed his movement with tired, shy eyes, wondering at his knowledge of little things. They ate their luncheon together by the fire. Twice he gravely refilled the foot-bath with hotter water, and she settled back in her soft, warm chair, sighing contentment.

After a while he lighted a cigarette and read to her—fairy tales from Perrault—legends that all children know—all children who have known mothers. Lorraine did not know them. At first she frowned a little, watching him dubiously, but little by little the music of the words and the fragrance of the sweet, vague tales crept into her heart, and she listened breathless to the stories, older than Egypt—stories that will outlast the last pyramid.

Once he laid down his book and told her of the Prince of Argolis and AEthra; of the sandals and sword, of Medea, and of the wreathed wine-cup. He told her, too, of the Isantee, and the legends of the gray gull, of Harpan and Chaske, and the white lodge of hope.

She listened like a tired child, her wrist curved under her chin, the bath-robe close to her throat. While she listened she moved her feet gently in the hot water, nestling back with the thrill of the warmth that mounted to her cheeks.

Then they were silent, their eyes on each other.

Down-stairs some rain-soaked officer was playing on the piano old songs of Lorraine and Alsace. He tried to sing, too, but his voice broke, whether from emotion or hoarseness they could not tell. A moment or two later a dripping infantry band marched out to the conservatory and began to play. The dismal trombone vibrated like a fog-horn, the wet drums buzzed and clattered, the trumpets wailed with the rising wind in the chimneys. They played for an hour, then stopped abruptly in the middle of "Partons pour la Syrie," and Jack and Lorraine heard them trampling away—slop, slop—across the gravel drive.

The fire in the room made the air heavy, and he raised one window a little way, but the wet wind was rank with the odour of disinfectants and ether from the stable hospital, and he closed the window after a moment.

"I spent all the morning with the wounded," said Lorraine, from the depths of her chair. The child-like light in her eyes had gone; nothing but woman's sorrow remained in their gray-blue depths.

Jack rose, picked up a big soft towel, and, deliberately lifting one of her feet from the water, rubbed it until it turned rosy. Then he rubbed the other, wrapped the bath-robe tightly about her, lifted her in his arms, threw back the bed-covers, and laid her there snug and warm.

"Sleep," he said.

She held up both arms with a divine smile.

"Stay with me until I sleep," she murmured drowsily. Her eyes closed; one hand sought his.

After a while she fell asleep.



XXIV

LORRAINE AWAKES

When Lorraine had been asleep for an hour, Jack stole from the room and sought the old general who was in command of the park. He found him on the terrace, smoking and watching the woods through his field-glasses.

"Monsieur," said Jack, "my ward, Mademoiselle de Nesville, is asleep in her chamber. I must go to the forest yonder and try to find her father's body. I dare not leave her alone unless I may confide her to you."

"My son," said the old man, "I accept the charge. Can you give me the next room?"

"The next room is where our little Sister of Mercy died."

"I have journeyed far with death—I am at home in death's chamber," said the old general. He followed Jack to the death-room, accompanied by his aide-de-camp.

"It will do," he said. Then, turning to an aid, "Place a sentry at the next door. When the lady awakes, call me."

"Thank you," said Jack. He lingered a moment and then continued: "If I am shot in the woods—if I don't return—General Chanzy will take charge of Mademoiselle de Nesville, for my uncle's sake. They are sword-brothers."

"I accept the responsibility," said the old general, gravely.

They bowed to each other, and Jack went out and down the stairs to the lawn. For a moment he looked up into the sky, trying to remember where the balloon might have been when Von Steyr's explosive bullet set it on fire. Then he trudged on into the wood-road, buckling his revolver-case under his arm and adjusting the cross-strap of his field-glasses.

Once in the forest he breathed more freely. There was an odour of rotting leaves in the wet air; the branches quivered and dripped, and the tree-trunks, moist and black, exhaled a rank aroma of lichens and rain-soaked moss.

Along the park wall, across the Lisse, sentinels stood in the rain, peering out of their caped overcoats or rambling along the river-bank. A spiritless challenge or two halted him for a few moments, but he gave the word and passed on. Once or twice squads met him and passed with the relief, sick boyish soldiers, crusted with mud. Twice he met groups of roving, restless-eyed franc-tireurs in straight caps and sheepskin jackets, but they did not molest him nor even question him beyond asking the time of day.

And now he passed the carrefour where he and Lorraine had first met. Its only tenant was a sentinel, yellow with jaundice, who seized his chassepot with shaking hands and called a shrill "Qui Vive?"

From the carrefour Jack turned to the left straight into the heart of the forest. He risked losing his way; he risked more than that, too, for a shot from sentry or franc-tireur was not improbable, and, more-over, nobody knew whether Uhlans were in the woods or not.

As he advanced the forest growth became thicker; underbrush, long uncut, rose higher than his head. Over logs and brush tangles he pressed, down into soft, boggy gullys deep with dead leaves, across rapid, dark brooks, threads of the river Lisse, over stony ledges, stumps, windfalls, and on towards the break in the trees from which, on clear days, one could see the turret-spire of the Chateau de Nesville. When he reached this point he looked in vain for the turret; the rain hid it. Still, he could judge fairly well in which direction it lay, and he knew that the distance was half a mile.

"The balloon dropped near here," he muttered, and started in a circle, taking a gigantic beech-tree as the centre mark. Gradually he widened his circuit, stumbling on over the slippery leaves, keeping a wary eye out for the thing on the ground that he sought.

He had seen no game in the forest, and wondered a little. Once or twice he fancied that he heard some animal moving near, but when he listened all was quiet, save for the hoarse calling of a raven in some near tree. Suddenly he saw the raven, and at the same moment it rose, croaking the alarm. Up through a near thicket floundered a cloud of black birds, flapping their wings. They were ravens, too, all croaking and flapping through the rain-soaked branches, mounting higher, higher, only to wheel and sail and swoop in circles, round and round in the gray sky above his head. He shivered and hesitated, knowing that the dead lay there in the thicket. And he was right; but when he saw the thing he covered his eyes with both hands and his heart rose in his throat. At last he stepped forward and looked into the vacant eye-sockets of a skull from which shreds of a long beard still hung, wet and straggling.

It lay under the washed-out roots of a fir-tree, the bare ribs staring through the torn clothing, the fleshless hands clasped about a steel box.

How he brought himself to get the box from that cage of bones he never knew. At last he had it, and stepped back, the sweat starting from every pore. But his work was not finished. What the ravens and wolves had left of the thing he pushed with sticks into a hollow, and painfully covered it with forest mould. Over this he pulled great lumps of muddy clay, trampling them down firmly, until at last the dead lay underground and a heap of stones marked the sepulchre.

The ravens had alighted in the tree-tops around the spot, watching him gravely, croaking and sidling away when he moved with abruptness. Looking up into the tree-tops he saw some shreds of stuff clinging to the branches, perhaps tatters from the balloon or the dead man's clothing. Near him on the ground lay a charred heap that was once the wicker car of the balloon. This he scattered with a stick, laid a covering of green moss on the mound, placed two sticks crosswise at the head, took off his cap, then went his way, the steel box buttoned securely in his breast. As he walked on through the forest, a wolf fled from the darkening undergrowth, hesitated, turned, cringing half boldly, half sullenly, watching him with changeless, incandescent eyes.

Darkness was creeping into the forest when he came out on the wood-road. He had a mile and a half before him without lantern or starlight, and he hastened forward through the mire, which seemed to pull him back at every step. It astonished him that he received no challenge in the twilight; he peered across the river, but saw no sentinels moving. The stillness was profound, save for the drizzle of the rain and the drip from the wet branches. He had been walking for a minute or two, trying to keep his path in the thickening twilight, when, far in the depths of the mist, a cannon thundered. Almost at once he heard the whistling quaver of a shell, high in the sky. Nearer and nearer it came, the woods hummed with the shrill vibration; then it passed, screeching; there came a swift glare in the sky, a sharp report, and the steel fragments hurtled through the naked trees.

He was running now; he knew the Prussian guns had opened on the Chateau again, and the thought of Lorraine in the tempest of iron terrified him. And now the shells were streaming into the woods, falling like burning stars from the heavens, bursting over the tree-tops; the racket of tearing, splintering limbs was in his ears, the dull shock of a shell exploding in the mud, the splash of fragments in the river. Behind him a red flare, ever growing, wavering, bursting into crimson radiance, told him that the Chateau de Nesville was ablaze. The black, trembling shadows cast by the trees grew blacker and steadier in the fiery light; the muddy road sprang into view under his feet; the river ran vermilion. Another light grew in the southern sky, faint yet, but growing surely. He ran swiftly, spurred and lashed by fear, for this time it was the Chateau Morteyn that sent a column of sparks above the trees, higher, higher, under a pall of reddening smoke.

At last he stumbled into the garden, where a mass of plunging horses tugged and strained at their harnessed guns and caissons. Muddy soldiers put their ragged shoulders to the gun-wheels and pushed; teamsters cursed and lashed their horses; officers rode through the throng, shouting. A squad of infantry began a fusillade from the wall; other squads fired from the lawn, where the rear of a long column in retreat stretched across the gardens and out into the road.

As Jack ran up the terrace steps the gatling began to whir like a watchman's rattle; needle-pointed flames pricked the darkness from hedge and wall, where a dark line swayed to and fro under the smoke.

Up the stairs he sped, and flung open the door of the bedroom. Lorraine stood in the middle of the room, looking out into the darkness. She turned at the sound of the opening door:

"Jack!"

"Hurry!" he gasped; "this time they mean business. Where is your sentinel? Where is the general? Hurry, my child—dress quickly!"

He went out to the hall again, and looked up and down. On the floor below he heard somebody say that the general was dead, and he hurried down among a knot of officers who were clustered at the windows, night-glasses levelled on the forest. As he entered the room a lieutenant fell dead and a shower of bullets struck the coping outside.

He hastened away up-stairs again. Lorraine, in cloak and hat, met him at the door.

"Keep away from all windows," he said. "Are you ready?"

She placed her arm in his, and he led her down the stairs to the rear of the Chateau.

"Have they gone—our soldiers?" faltered Lorraine. "Is it defeat? Jack, answer me!"

"They are holding the Chateau to protect the retreat, I think. Hark! The gatling is roaring like a furnace! What has happened?"

"I don't know. The old general came to speak to me when I awoke. He was very good and kind. Then suddenly the sentinel on the stairs fell down and we ran out. He was dead; a bullet had entered from the window at the end of the hall. After that I went into my room to dress, and the general hurried down-stairs, telling me to wait until he called for me. He did not come back; the firing began, and some shells hit the house. All the troops in the garden began to leave, and I did not know what to do, so I waited for you."

Jack glanced right and left. The artillery were leaving by the stable road; from every side the infantry streamed past across the lawn, running when they came to the garden, where a shower of bullets fell among the shrubbery. A captain hastening towards the terrace looked at them in surprise.

"What is it?" cried Jack. "Can't you hold the Chateau?"

"The other Chateau has been carried," said the captain. "They are taking us on the left flank. Madame," he added, "should go at once; this place will be untenable in a few moments."

Lorraine spoke breathlessly: "Are you to hold the Chateau with the gatling until the army is safe?"

"Yes, madame," said the captain. "We are obliged to."

There came a sudden lull in the firing. Lorraine caught Jack's arm.

"Come," cried Jack, "we've got to go now!"

"I shall stay!" she said; "I know my work is here!"

The German rifle-flames began to sparkle and flicker along the river-bank; a bullet rang out against the granite facade behind them.

"Come!" he cried, sharply, but she slipped from him and ran towards the house.

Drums were beating somewhere in the distant forest—shrill, treble drums—and from every hill-side the hollow, harsh Prussian trumpets spoke. Then came a sound, deep, menacing—a far cry:

"Hourra! Preussen!"

"Why don't you cheer?" faltered Lorraine, mounting the terrace. The artillerymen looked at her in surprise. Jack caught her arm; she shook him off impatiently.

"Cheer!" she cried again. "Is France dumb?" She raised her hand.

"Vive la France!" shouted the artillerymen, catching her ardour. "Vive la Patrie! Vive Lorraine!"

Again the short, barking, Prussian cheer sounded, and again the artillerymen answered it, cheer on cheer, for France, for the Land, for the Province of Lorraine. Up in the windows of the Chateau the line soldiers were cheering, too; the engineers on the roof, stamping out the sparks and flames, swung their caps and echoed the shouts from terrace and window.

In the sudden silence that followed they caught the vibration of hundreds of hoofs—there came a rush, a shout:

"Hourra! Preussen! Hourra! Hourra!" and into the lawn dashed the German cavalry, banging away with carbine and revolver. At the same moment, over the park walls swarmed the Bavarians in a forest of bayonets. The Chateau vomited flame from every window; the gatling, pulled back into the front door, roared out in a hundred streaks of fire. Jack dragged Lorraine to the first floor; she was terribly excited. Almost at once she knelt down and began to load rifles, passing them to Jack, who passed them to the soldiers at the windows. Once, when a whole window was torn in and the mattress on fire, she quenched the flames with water from her pitcher; and when the soldiers hesitated at the breach, she started herself, but Jack held her back and led the cheering, and piled more mattresses into the shattered window.

Below in the garden the Bavarians were running around the house, hammering with rifle-butts at the closed shutters, crouching, dodging from stable to garden, perfectly possessed to get into the house. Their officers bellowed orders and shook their sabres in the very teeth of the rifle blast; the cavalry capered and galloped, and flew from thicket to thicket.

Suddenly they all gave way; the garden and lawns were emptied save for the writhing wounded and motionless dead.

"Cheer!" gasped Lorraine; and the battered Chateau rang again with frenzied cries of triumph.

The wounded were calling for water, and Jack and Lorraine brought it in bowls. Here and there the bedding and wood-work had caught fire, but the line soldiers knocked it out with their rifle-butts. Whenever Lorraine entered a room they cheered her—the young officers waved their caps, even a dying bugler raised himself and feebly sounded the salute to the colours.

By the light of the candles Jack noticed for the first time that Lorraine wore the dress of the Province—that costume that he had first seen her in—the scarlet skirt, the velvet bodice, the chains of silver. And as she stood loading the rifles in the smoke-choked room, the soldiers saw more than that: they saw the Province itself in battle there—the Province of Lorraine. And they cheered and leaped to the windows, firing frenziedly, crying the old battle-cry of Lorraine: "Tiens ta Foy! Frappe! Pour le Roy!" while the child in the bodice and scarlet skirt stood up straight and snapped back the locks of the loaded chassepots, one by one.

"Once again! For France!" cried Lorraine, as the clamour of the Prussian drums broke out on the hill-side, and the hoarse trumpets signalled from wood to wood.

A thundering cry arose from the Chateau:

"France!"

The sullen boom of a Prussian cannon drowned it; the house shook with the impact of a shell, bursting in fury on the terrace.

White faces turned to faces whiter still.

"Cannon!"

"Hold on! For France!" cried Lorraine, feverishly.

"Cannon!" echoed the voices, one to another.

Again the solid walls shook with the shock of a solid shot.

Jack stuffed the steel box into his breast and turned to Lorraine.

"It is ended, we cannot stay—" he began; but at that instant something struck him a violent blow on the chest, and he fell, striking the floor with his head.

In a second Lorraine was at his side, lifting him with all the strength of her arms, calling to him: "Jack! Jack! Jack!"

The soldiers were leaving the windows now; the house rocked and tottered under the blows of shell and solid shot. Down-stairs an officer cried: "Save yourselves!" There was a hurry of feet through the halls and on the stairs. A young soldier touched Lorraine timidly on the shoulder.

"Give him to me; I will carry him down," he said.

She clung to Jack and turned a blank gaze on the soldier.

"Give him to me," he repeated; "the house is burning." But she would not move nor relinquish her hold. Then the soldier seized Jack and threw him over his shoulder, running swiftly down the stairs, that rocked under his feet. Lorraine cried out and followed him into the darkness, where the crashing of tiles and thunder of the exploding shells dazed and stunned her; but the soldier ran on across the garden, calling to her, and she followed, stumbling to his side.

"To the trees—yonder—the forest—" he gasped.

They were already among the trees. Then Lorraine seized the man by the arm, her eyes wide with despair.

"Give me my dead!" she panted. "He is mine! mine! mine!"

"He is not dead," faltered the soldier, laying Jack down against a tree. But she only crouched and took him in her arms, eyes closed, and lips for the first time crushed to his.



XXV

PRINCESS IMPERIAL

The glare from the Chateau Morteyn, now wrapped in torrents of curling flame, threw long crimson shafts of light far into the forest. The sombre trees glimmered like live cinders; the wet moss crisped and bronzed as the red radiance played through the thickets. The bright, wavering fire-glow fell full on Jack's body; his face was hidden in the shadow of Lorraine's hair.

Twice the timid young soldier drew her away, but she crept back, murmuring Jack's name; and at last the soldier seized the body in both arms and stumbled on again, calling Lorraine to follow.

Little by little the illumination faded out among the trees; the black woods crowded in on every side; the noise of the crackling flames, the shouting, the brazen rattle of drums grew fainter and fainter, and finally died out in the soft, thick blackness of the forest.

When they halted the young soldier placed Jack on the moss, then held out his hands. Lorraine touched them. He guided her to the prostrate figure; she flung herself face down beside it.

After a moment the soldier touched her again timidly on the shoulder:

"Have I done well?"

She sobbed her thanks, rising to her knees. The soldier, a boy of eighteen, straightened up; he noiselessly laid his knapsack and haversack on the ground, trembled, swayed, and sat down, muttering vaguely of God and the honour of France. Presently he went away, lurching in the darkness like a drunken man—on, on, deep into the forest, where nothing of light or sound penetrated. And when he could no longer stand he sat down, his young head in his hands, and waited. His body had been shot through and through. About midnight he died.

When Jack came to his senses the gray mystery of dawn was passing through the silent forest aisles; the beeches, pallid, stark, loomed motionless on every side; the pale veil of sky-fog hung festooned from tree to tree. There was a sense of breathless waiting in the shadowy woods—no sound, no stir, nothing of life or palpitation—nothing but foreboding.

Jack crawled to his knees; his chest ached, his mouth cracked with a terrible throbbing thirst. Dazed as yet, he did not even look around; he did not try to think; but that weight on his chest grew to a burning agony, and he tore at his coat and threw it open. The flat steel box, pierced by a bullet, fell on the ground before his knees. Then he remembered. He ripped open waistcoat and shirt and stared at his bare breast. It was discoloured—a mass of bruises, but there was no blood there. He looked listlessly at the box on the leaves under him, and touched his bruised body. Suddenly his mind grew clearer; he stumbled up, steadying himself against a tree. His lips moved "Lorraine!" but no sound came. Again, in terror, he tried to cry out. He could not speak. Then he saw her. She lay among the dead leaves, face downward in the moss.

When at last he understood that she was alive he lay down beside her, one arm across her body, and sank into a profound sleep.

She woke first. A burning thirst set her weeping in her sleep and then roused her. Tear-stained and ghastly pale, she leaned over the sleeping man beside her, listened to his breathing, touched his hair, then rose and looked fearfully about her. On the knapsack under the tree a tin cup was shining. She took it and crept down into a gulley, where, through the deep layers of dead leaves, water sparkled in a string of tiny iridescent puddles. The water, however, was sweet and cold, and, when she had satisfied her thirst and had dug into the black loam with the edge of the cup, more water, sparkling and pure, gushed up and spread out in the miniature basin. She waited for the mud and leaves to settle, and when the basin was clear she unbound her hair, loosened her bodice, and slipped it off. When she had rolled the wide, full sleeves of her chemise to the shoulder she bathed her face and breast and arms; they glistened like marble tinged with rose in the pale forest dawn. The little scrupulous ablutions finished, she dried her face on the fine cambric of the under-sleeve, she dried her little ears, her brightening eyes, the pink palms of her hand, and every polished finger separately from the delicate flushed tip to the wrist, blue-veined and slender. She shook out her heavy hair, heavy and gleaming with burnished threads, and bound it tighter. She mended the broken points of her bodice, then laced it firmly till it pressed and warmed her fragrant breast. Then she rose.

There was nothing of fear or sorrow in her splendid eyes; her mouth was moist and scarlet, her curved cheeks pure as a child's.

For a moment she stood pensive, her face now grave, now sensitive, now touched with that mysterious exaltation that glows through the histories of the saints, that shines from tapestries, that hides in the dim faces carved on shrines.

For the world was trembling and the land cried out under the scourge, and she was ready now for what must be. The land would call her where she was awaited; the time, the hour, the place had been decreed. She was ready—and where was the bitterness of death, when she could face it with the man she loved.

Loved? At the thought her knees trembled under her with the weight of this love; faint with its mystery and sweetness, her soul turned in its innocence to God. And for the first time in her child's life she understood that God lived.

She understood now that the sadness of life was gone forever. There was no loneliness now for soul or heart; nothing to fear, nothing to regret. Her life was complete. Death seemed an incident. If it came to her or to the man she loved, they would wait for one another a little while—that was all.

A pale sunbeam stole across the tree-tops. She looked up. A little bird sang, head tilted towards the blue. She moved softly up the slope, her hair glistening in the early sun, her blue eyes dreaming; and when she came to the sleeping man she bent beside him and held a cup of sweet water to his lips.

About noon they spoke of hunger, timidly, lest either might think the other complained. Her head close against his, her warm arms tight around his neck, she told him of the boy soldier, the dreadful journey in the night, the terror, and the awakening. She told him of the birth of her love for him—how death no longer was to be feared or sought. She told him there was nothing to alarm him, nothing to make them despair. Sin could not touch them; death was God's own gift.

He listened, too happy to even try to understand. Perhaps he could not, being only a young man in love. But he knew that all she said must be true, perhaps too true for him to comprehend. He was satisfied; his life was complete. Something of the contentment of a school-boy exhausted with play lingered in his eyes.

They had spoken of the box; she had taken it reverently in her hands and touched the broken key, snapped off short in the lock. Inside, the Prussian bullet rattled as she turned the box over and over, her eyes dim with love for the man who had done all for her.

Jack found a loaf of bread in the knapsack. It was hard and dry, but they soaked it in the leaf-covered spring and ate it deliciously, cheek against cheek.

Little by little their plans took shape. They were to go—Heaven knows how!—to find the Emperor. Into his hands they would give the box with its secrets, then turn again, always together, ready for their work, wherever it might be.

Towards mid-afternoon Lorraine grew drowsy. There was a summer warmth in the air; the little forest birds came to the spring and preened their feathers in the pale sunshine. Two cicadas, high in the tree-tops, droned an endless harmony; hemlock cones dropped at intervals on the dead leaves.

When Lorraine lay asleep, her curly head on Jack's folded coat, her hands clasped under her cheek, Jack leaned back against the tree and picked up the box. He turned it softly, so that the bullet within should not rattle. After a moment he opened his penknife and touched the broken fragment of the key in the lock. Idly turning the knife-blade this way and that, but noiselessly, for fear of troubling Lorraine, he thought of the past, the present, and the future. Sir Thorald lay dead on the hillock above the river Lisse; Alixe slept beside him; Rickerl was somewhere in the country, riding with his Uhlan scourges; Molly Hesketh waited in Paris for her dead husband; the Marquis de Nesville's bones were lying in the forest where he now sat, watching the sleeping child of the dead man. His child? Jack looked at her tenderly. No, not the child of the Marquis de Nesville, but a foundling, a lost waif in the Lorraine Hills, perhaps a child of chance. What of it? She would never know. The Chateau de Nesville was a smouldering mass of fire; the lands could revert to the country; she should never again need them, never again see them, for he would take her to his own land when trouble of war had passed, and there she should forget pain and sorrow and her desolate, loveless childhood; she should only remember that in the Province of Lorraine she had met the man she loved. All else should be a memory of green trees and vineyards and rivers, growing vaguer and dimmer as the healing years passed on.

The knife-blade in the box bent, sprang back—the box flew open.

He did not realize it at first; he looked at the three folded papers lying within, curiously, indolently. Presently he took them and looked at the superscriptions written on the back, in the handwriting of the marquis. The three papers were inscribed as follows:

"1. For the French Government after the fall of the Empire."

"2. For the French Government on the death of Louis Bonaparte, falsely called Emperor."

"3. To whom it may concern!"

"To whom it may concern!" he repeated, looking at the third paper. Presently he opened it and read it, and as he read his heart seemed to cease its beating.

"TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN!

"Grief has unsettled my mind, yet, what I now write is true, and, if there is a God, I solemnly call His curses on me and mine if I lie.

"My only son, Rene Philip d'Harcourt de Nesville, was assassinated on the Grand Boulevard in Paris, on the 2d of December, 1851. His assassin was a monster named Louis Bonaparte, now known falsely as Napoleon III., Emperor of the French. His paid murderers shot my boy down, and stabbed him to death with their bayonets, in front of the Cafe Tortoni. I carried his body home; I sat at the window, with my dead boy on my knees, and I saw Louis Bonaparte ride into the Rue St. Honore with his murderous Lancers, and I saw children spit at him and hurl curses at him from the barricade.

"Now I, Gilbert, Marquis de Nesville, swore to strike. And I struck, not at his life—that can wait. I struck at the root of all his pride and honour—I struck at that which he held dearer than these—at his dynasty!

"Do the people of France remember when the Empress was first declared enciente? The cannon thundered from the orangerie at Saint-Cloud, the dome of the Invalides blazed rockets, the city glittered under a canopy of coloured fire. Oh, they were very careful of the Empress of the French! They went to Saint-Cloud, and later to Versailles, as they go to holy cities, praying. And the Emperor himself grew younger, they said.

"Then came the news that the expected heir, a son, had been born dead! Lies!

"I, Gilbert de Nesville, was in the forest when the Empress of the French fell ill. When separated from the others she called to Morny, and bade him drive for the love of Heaven! And they drove—they drove to the Trianon, and there was no one there. And there the child was born. Morny held it in his arms. He came out to the colonnade holding it in his arms, and calling for a messenger. I came, and when I was close to Morny I struck him in the face and he fell senseless. I took the child and wrapped it in my cloak. This is the truth!

"They dared not tell it; they dared not, for fear and for shame. They said that an heir had been born dead; and they mourned for their dead son. It was only a daughter. She is alive; she loves me, and, God forgive me, I hate her for defeating my just vengeance.

"And I call her Lorraine de Nesville."



XXVI

THE SHADOW OF POMP

The long evening shadows were lengthening among the trees; sleepy birds twitted in dusky thickets; Lorraine slept.

Jack still stood staring at the paper in his hands, trying to understand the purport of what he read and reread, until the page became a blur and his hot eyes burned.

All the significance of the situation rose before him. This child, the daughter of the oath-breaker, the butcher of December, the sly, slow diplomate of Europe, the man of Rome, of Mexico, the man now reeling back to Chalons under the iron blows of an aroused people. In Paris, already, they cursed his name; they hurled insults at the poor Empress, that mother in despair. Thiers, putting his senile fingers in the porridge, stirred a ferment that had not even germinated since the guillotine towered in the Place de la Concorde and the tumbrils rattled through the streets. He did not know what he was stirring. The same impulse that possessed Gladstone to devastate trees animated Thiers. He stirred the dangerous mess because he liked to stir, nothing more. But from that hell's broth the crimson spectre of the Commune was to rise, when the smoke of Sedan had drifted clear of a mutilated nation.

Through the heavy clouds of death which were already girdling Paris, that flabby Cyclops, Gambetta, was to mouth his monstrous platitudes, and brood over the battle-smoke, a nightmare of pomposity and fanfaronade—in a balloon. All France was bowed down in shame at the sight of the grotesque convoy, who were proclaiming her destiny among nations, and their destiny to lead her to victory and "la gloire." A scorched, blood-soaked land, a pall of smoke through which brave men bared their breasts to the blast from the Rhine, and died uncomplainingly, willingly, cheerfully, for the mother-land—was it not pitiful?

The sublime martyrdom of the men who marched, who shall write it? And who shall write of those others—Bazaine, Napoleon, Thiers, Gambetta, Favre, Ollivier?

If Bazaine died, cursed by a nation, his martyrdom, for martyrdom it was, was no greater than that of the humblest French peasant, who, dying, knew at last that he died, not for France, but because the men who sent him were worse than criminal—they were imbecile.

The men who marched were sublime; they were the incarnation of embattled France; the starving people of Metz, of Strassbourg, of Paris, were sublime. But there was nothing sublime about Monsieur Adolphe Thiers, nothing heroic about Hugo, nothing respectable about Gambetta. The marshal with the fat neck and Spanish affiliations, the poor confused, inert, over-fed marshal caged in Metz by the Red Prince, harassed, bewildered, stunned by the clashing of politics and military strategy, which his meagre brain was unable to reconcile or separate—this unfortunate incapable was deserving of pity, perhaps of contempt. His cup was to be bitterer than that—it was to be drained, too, with the shouts of "Traitor" stunning his fleshy ears.

He was no traitor. Cannot France understand that this single word "traitor" has brought her to contempt in the eyes of the world? There are two words that mar every glorious, sublime page of the terrible history of 1870-71, and these two words are "treason" and "revenge." Let the nation face the truth, let the people write "incapacity" for "treason," and "honour" for "revenge," and then the abused term "la gloire" will be justified in the eyes of men.

As for Thiers, let men judge him from his three revolutions, let the unknown dead in the ditches beyond the enceinte judge him, let the spectres of the murdered from Pere Lachaise to the bullet-pitted terrace of the Luxembourg judge this meddler, this potterer in epoch-making cataclysms. Bismarck, gray, imbittered, without honour in an unenlightened court, can still smile when he remembers Jules Favre and his prayer for the National Guard.

And these were the men who formed the convoy around the chariot of France militant, France in arms!—a cortege at once hideous, shameful, ridiculous, grotesque.

What was left of the Empire? Metz still held out; Strassbourg trembled under the shock of Prussian mortars; Paris strained its eyes for the first silhouette of the Uhlan on the heights of Versailles; and through the chill of the dying year the sombre Emperor, hunted, driven, threatened, tumbled into the snare of Sedan as a sick buzzard flutters exhausted to earth under a shower of clubs and stones.

The end was to be brutal: a charge or two of devoted men, a crush at the narrow gates, a white flag, a brusque gesture from Bismarck, nothing more except a "guard of honour," an imperial special train, and Belgian newsboys shrieking along the station platform, "Extra! Fall of the Empire! Paris proclaims the Republic! Flight of the Empress! Extra!"

Jack, sitting with the paper in his hands, read between the lines, and knew that the prophecy of evil days would be fulfilled. But as yet the writing on the wall of Alsatian hills had not spelled "Sedan," nor did he know of the shambles of Mars-la-Tour, the bloody work at Buzancy, the retreat from Chalons, and the evacuation of Vitry.

Buzancy marked the beginning of the end. It was nothing but a skirmish; the 3d Saxon Cavalry, a squadron or two of the 18th Uhlans, and Zwinker's Battery fought a half-dozen squadrons of chasseurs. But the red-letter mark on the result was unmistakable. Bazaine's correspondence was captured. On the same day the second sortie occurred from Strassbourg. It was time, for the trenches and parallels had been pushed within six hundred paces of the glacis. And so it was everywhere, the whole country was in a ferment of disorganized but desperate resistance of astonishment, indignation, dismay.

The nation could not realize that it was too late, that it was not conquest but invasion which the armies of France must prepare for. Blow after blow fell, disaster after disaster stunned the country, while the government studied new and effective forms of lying and evasion, and the hunted Emperor drifted on to his doom in the pitfall of Sedan.

All Alsace except Belfort, Strassbourg, Schlettstadt, and Neuf Brisac was in German hands, under German power, governed by German law. The Uhlans scoured the country as clean as possible, but the franc-tireurs roamed from forest to forest, sometimes gallantly facing martyrdom, sometimes looting, burning, pillaging, and murdering. If Germans maintain that the only good franc-tireur is a dead franc-tireur, they are not always justified. Let them sit first in judgment on Andreas Hofer. England had Hereward; America, Harry Lee; and, when the South is ready to acknowledge Mosby and Quantrell of the same feather, it will be time for France to blush for her franc-tireurs. Noble and ignoble, patriots and cowards, the justified and the misguided wore the straight kepi and the sheepskin jacket. All figs in Spain are not poisoned.

With the fall of the Chateau Morteyn, the war in Lorraine would degenerate into a combat between picquets of Uhlans and roving franc-tireurs. There would be executions of spies, vengeance on peasants, examples made of franc-tireurs, and all the horrors of irregular warfare. Jack knew this; he understood it perfectly when the muddy French infantry tramped out of the Chateau Morteyn and vanished among the dark hills in the rain.

For himself, had he been alone, there would have been nothing to keep him in the devastated province. Indeed, considering his peculiarly strained relations with the Uhlans of Rickerl's regiment, it behooved him to get across the Belgian frontier very promptly.

Now he not only had Lorraine, he had the woman who loved him and who was ready to sacrifice herself and him too for the honour of France. She lived for one thing—the box, with its pitiful contents, its secrets of aerial navigation and destruction, must be placed at the service of France. The government was France now, and the Empress was the government. Lorraine knew nothing of the reasons her father had had for his hatred of the Emperor and the Empire. Personal grievances, even when those grievances were her father's, even though they might be justified, would never deter her from placing the secrets that might aid, might save, France with the man who, at that moment, in her eyes, represented the safety, security, the very existence of the land she loved.

Jack knew this. Whether she was right or not did not occur to him to ask. But the irony of it, the grim necessity of such a fate, staggered him—a daughter seeking her father at the verge of his ruin—a child, long lost, forgotten, unrecognized, unclaimed, finding the blind path to a father who, when she had been torn from him, dared not seek for her, dared not whisper of her existence except to Morny in the cloaked shadows of secret places.

For good or ill Jack made up his mind; he had decided for himself and for her. Her loveless, lonely childhood had been enough of sorrow for one young life; she should have no further storm, no more heartaches, nothing but peace and love and the strong arm of a man to shield her. Let her remember the only father she had ever known—let her remember him with faithful love and sorrow as she would. For the wrong he had done, let him account to another tribunal; her, the echo of that crime and hate and passion must never reach.

Why should he, the man who loved her, bring to her this heritage of ruin? Why should he tear the veil from her trusting eyes and show her a land bought with blood and broken oaths, sold in blood and infamy? Why should he show her this, and say, "This is the work of your imperial family! There is your father!—some call him the Assassin of December! There is your mother!—read the pages of an Eastern diary! There, too, is your brother, a sick child of fifteen, baptized at Saarbrueck, endowed at Sedan?"

It was enough that France lay prostrate, that the wounded screamed from the blood-wet fields, that the quiet dead lay under the pall of smoke from the nation's funeral pyre. It was enough that the parents suffer, that the son drag out an existence among indifferent or hostile people in an alien land. The daughter should never know, never weep when they wept, never pray when they prayed. This was retribution—not his, he only watched in silence the working of divine justice.

He tore the paper into fragments and ground them under his heel deep into the soft forest mould.

Lorraine slept.

He stood a long while in silence looking down at her. She was breathing quietly, regularly; her long, curling lashes rested on curved cheeks, delicate as an infant's.

Half fearfully he stooped to arouse her. A footfall sounded on the dead leaves behind him, and a franc-tireur touched him on the shoulder.



XXVII

CA IRA!

"What do you want?" asked Jack, in a voice that vibrated unpleasantly. There was a dangerous light in his eyes; his lips grew thinner and whiter. One by one a dozen franc-tireurs stepped from behind the trees on every side, rifles shimmering in the subdued afternoon haze—wiry, gloomy-eyed men, their sleeveless sheepskin jackets belted in with leather, their sombre caps and trousers thinly banded with orange braid. They looked at him without speaking, almost without curiosity, fingering their gunlocks, bayoneted rifles unslung.

"Your name?" said the man who had touched him on the shoulder.

He did not reply at once. One of the men began to laugh.

"He's the vicomte's nephew," said another; and, pointing at Lorraine, who, now aroused, sat up on the moss beside Jack, he continued: "And that is the little chatelaine of the Chateau de Nesville." He took off his straight-visored cap.

The circle of gaunt, sallow faces grew friendly, and, as Lorraine stood up, looking questioningly from one to the other, caps were doffed, rifle-butts fell to the ground.

"Why, it's Monsieur Tricasse of the Saint-Lys Pompiers!" she said. "Oh, and there is le Pere Passerat, and little Emile Brun! Emile, my son, why are you not with your regiment?" The dark faces lighted up; somebody snickered; Brun, the conscript of the class of '71 who had been hauled by the heels from under his mother's bed, looked confused and twiddled his thumbs.

One by one the franc-tireurs came shambling up to pay their awkward respects to Lorraine and to Jack, while Tricasse pulled his bristling mustache and clattered his sabre in its sheath approvingly. When his men had acquitted themselves with all the awkward sincerity of Lorraine peasants, he advanced with a superb bow and flourish, lifting his cap from his gray head:

"In my quality of ex-pompier and commandant of the 'Terrors of Morteyn'—my battalion"—here he made a sweeping gesture as though briefly reviewing an army corps instead of a dozen wolfish-eyed peasants—"I extend to our honoured and beloved Chatelaine de Nesville, and to our honoured guest, Monsieur Marche, the protection and safe-conduct of the 'Terrors of Morteyn.'"

As he spoke his expression became exalted. He, Tricasse, ex-pompier and exempt, was posing as the saviour of his province, and he felt that, though German armies stretched in endless ranks from the Loire to the Meuse, he, Tricasse, was the man of destiny, the man of the place and the hour when beauty was in distress.

Lorraine, her eyes dim with gentle tears, held out both slender hands; Tricasse bent low and touched them with his grizzled mustache. Then he straightened up, frowned at his men, and said "Attention!" in a very fierce voice.

The half-starved fellows shuffled into a single rank; their faces were wreathed in sheepish smiles. Jack noticed that a Bavarian helmet and side-arm hung from the knapsack of one, a mere freckled lad, downy and dimpled. Tricasse drew his sabre, turned, marched solemnly along the front, wheeled again, and saluted.

Jack lifted his cap; Lorraine, her arm in his, bowed and smiled tearfully.

"The dear, brave fellows!" she cried, impulsively, whereat every man reddened, and Tricasse grew giddy with emotion. He tried to speak; his emotion was great.

"In my capacity of ex-pompier," he gasped, then went to pieces, and hid his eyes in his hands. The "Terrors of Morteyn" wept with him to a man.

Presently, with a gesture to Tricasse, Jack led Lorraine down the slope, past the spring, and on through the forest, three "Terrors" leading, rifles poised, Tricasse and the others following, alert and balancing their cocked rifles.

"How far is your camp?" asked Jack. "We need food and the warmth of a fire. Tell me, Monsieur Tricasse, what is left of the two chateaux?"

Lorraine bent nearer as the old man said: "The Chateau de Nesville is a mass of cinders; Morteyn, a stone skeleton. Pierre is dead. There are many dead there—many, many dead. The Prussians burned Saint-Lys yesterday; they shot Bosquet, the letter-carrier; they hung his boy to the railroad trestle, then shot him to pieces. The Cure is a prisoner; the Mayor of Saint-Lys and the Notary have been sent to the camp at Strassbourg. We, my 'Terrors of Morteyn' and I, are still facing the vandals; except for us, the Province of Lorraine is empty of Frenchmen in armed resistance."

The old man, in his grotesque uniform, touched his bristling mustache and muttered: "Nom d'une pipe!" several times to steady his voice.

Lorraine and Jack pressed on silently, sorrowfully, hand in hand, watching the scouts ahead, who were creeping on through the trees, heads turning from side to side, rifles raised. They passed along the back of a thickly wooded ridge for some distance, perhaps a mile, before the thin blue line of a smouldering camp-fire rose almost in their very faces. A low challenge from a clump of birch-trees was answered, there came the sound of rifles dropping, the noise of feet among the leaves, a whisper, and before they knew it they were standing at the mouth of a hole in the bank, from which came the odour of beef-broth simmering. Two or three franc-tireurs passed them, looking up curiously into their faces. Tricasse dragged a dilapidated cane-chair from the dirt-cave and placed it before Lorraine as though he were inviting her to an imperial throne.

"Thank you," she said, sweetly, and seated herself, not relinquishing Jack's hand.

Two tin basins of soup were brought to them; they ate it, soaking bits of crust in it.

The men pretended not to watch them. With all their instinctive delicacy these clumsy peasants busied themselves in guard-mounting, weapon cleaning, and their cuisine, as though there was no such thing as a pretty woman within miles. But it tried their gallantry as Frenchmen and their tact as Lorraine peasants. Furtive glances, deprecatory and timid, were met by the sweetest of smiles from Lorraine or a kindly nod from Jack. Tricasse, utterly unbalanced by his new role of protector of beauty, gave orders in fierce, agitated whispers, and made sudden aimless promenades around the birch thicket. In one of these prowls he discovered a toad staring at the camp-fire, and he drew his sword with a furious gesture, as though no living toad were good enough to intrude on the Chatelaine of the Chateau de Nesville; but the toad hopped away, and Tricasse unbent his brows and resumed his agitated prowl.

When Lorraine had finished her soup, Jack took both plates into the cave and gave them to a man who, squatted on his haunches, was washing dishes. Lorraine followed him and sat down on a blanket, leaning back against the side of the cave.

"Wait for me," said Jack. She drew his head down to hers.

They lingered there in the darkness a moment, unconscious of the amazed but humourous glances of the cook; then Jack went out and found Tricasse, and walked with him to the top of the tree-clad ridge.

A road ran under the overhanging bank.

"I didn't know we were so near a road," said Jack, startled. Tricasse laid his finger on his lips.

"It is the high-road to Saint-Lys. We have settled more than one Uhlan dog on that curve there by the oak-tree. Look! Here comes one of our men. See! He's got something, too."

Sure enough, around the bend in the road slunk a franc-tireur, loaded down with what appeared to be mail-sacks. Cautiously he reconnoitred the bank, the road, the forest on the other side, whistled softly, and, at Tricasse's answering whistle, came puffing and blowing up the slope, and flung a mail-bag, a rifle, a Bavarian helmet, and a German knapsack to the ground.

"The big police officer?" inquired Tricasse, eagerly.

"Yes, the big one with the red beard. He died hard. I used the bayonet only," said the franc-tireur, looking moodily at the dried blood on his hairy fists. "I got a Bavarian sentry, too; there's the proof."

Jack looked at the helmet. Tricasse ripped up the mail-sack with his long clasp-knife. "They stole our mail; they will not steal it again," observed Tricasse, sorting the letters and shuffling them like cards.

One by one he looked them over, sorted out two, stuffed the rest into the breast of his sheepskin coat, and stood up.

"There are two letters for you, Monsieur Marche, that were going to be read by the Prussian police officials," he said, holding the letters out. "What do you think of our new system of mail delivery? German delivery, franc-tireur facteur, eh, Monsieur Marche?"

"Give me the letters," said Jack, quietly.

He sat down and read them both, again and again. Tricasse turned his back, and stirred the Bavarian helmet with his boot-toe; the franc-tireur gathered up his spoils, and, at a gesture from Tricasse, carried them down the slope towards the hidden camp.

"Put out the fire, too," called Tricasse, softly. "I begin to smell it."

When Jack had finished his reading, he looked up at Tricasse, folding the letters and placing them in his breast, where the flat steel box was.

"Letters from Paris," he said. "The Uhlans have appeared in the Eure-et-Seine and at Melun. They are arming the forts and enceinte, and the city is being provisioned for a siege."

"Paris!" blurted out Tricasse, aghast.

Jack nodded, silently.

After a moment he resumed: "The Emperor is said to be with the army near Mezieres on the south bank of the Meuse. We are going to find him, Mademoiselle de Nesville and I. Tell us what to do."

Tricasse stared at him, incapable of speech.

"Very well," said Jack, gently, "think it over. Tell me, at least, how we can avoid the German lines. We must start this evening."

He turned and descended the bank rapidly, letting himself down by the trunks of the birch saplings, treading softly and cautiously over stones and dead leaves, for the road was so near that a careless footstep might perhaps be heard by passing Uhlans. In a few minutes he crossed the ridge, and descended into the hollow, where the odour of the extinguished fire lingered in the air.

Lorraine was sitting quietly in the cave; Jack entered and sat down on the blankets beside her.

"The franc-tireurs captured a mail-sack just now," he said. "In it were two letters for me; one from my sister Dorothy, and the other from Lady Hesketh. Dorothy writes in alarm, because my uncle and aunt arrived without me. They also are frightened because they have heard that Morteyn was again threatened. The Uhlans have been seen in neighbouring departments, and the city is preparing for a siege. My uncle will not allow his wife or Dorothy or Betty Castlemaine to stay in Paris, so they are all going to Brussels, and expect me to join them there. They know nothing of what has happened at your home or at Morteyn; they need not know it until we meet them. Listen, Lorraine: it is my duty to find the Emperor and deliver this box to him; but you must not go—it is not necessary. So I am going to get you to Brussels somehow, and from there I can pass on about my duty with a free heart."

She placed both hands and then her lips over his mouth.

"Hush," she said; "I am going with you; it is useless, Jack, to try to persuade me. Hush, my darling; there, be sensible; our path is very hard and cruel, but it does not separate us; we tread it together, always together, Jack." He struggled to speak; she held him close, and laid her head against his breast, contented, thoughtful, her eyes dreaming in the half-light of France reconquered, of noble deeds and sacrifices, of the great bells of churches thundering God's praise to a humble, thankful nation, proud in its faith, generous in its victory. As she lay dreaming close to the man she loved, a sudden tumult startled the sleeping echoes of the cave—the scuffling and thrashing of a shod horse among dead leaves and branches. There came a groan, a crash, the sound of a blow; then silence.

Outside, the franc-tireurs, rifles slanting, were moving swiftly out into the hollow, stooping low among the trees. As they hurried from the cave another franc-tireur came up, leading a riderless cavalry horse by one hand; in the other he held his rifle, the butt dripping with blood.

"Silence," he motioned to them, pointing to the wooded ridge beyond. Jack looked intently at the cavalry horse. The schabraque was blue, edged with yellow; the saddle-cloth bore the number "11."

"Uhlan?" He formed the word with his lips.

The franc-tireur nodded with a ghastly smile and glanced down at his dripping gunstock.

Lorraine's hand closed on Jack's arm.

"Come to the hill," she said; "I cannot stand that."

On the crest of the wooded ridge crouched Tricasse, bared sabre stuck in the ground before him, a revolver in either fist. Around him lay his men, flat on the ground, eyes focussed on the turn in the road below. Their eyes glowed like the eyes of caged beasts, their sinewy fingers played continually with the rifle-hammers.

Jack hesitated, his arm around Lorraine's body, his eyes fixed nervously on the bend in the road.

Something was coming; there were cries, the trample of horses, the shuffle of footsteps. Suddenly an Uhlan rode cautiously around the bend, glanced right and left, looked back, signalled, and started on. Behind him crowded a dozen more Uhlans, lances glancing, pennants streaming in the wind.

"They've got a woman!" whispered Lorraine.

They had a man, too—a powerful, bearded peasant, with a great livid welt across his bloodless face. A rope hung around his neck, the end of which was attached to the saddle-bow of an Uhlan. But what made Jack's heart fairly leap into his mouth was to see Siurd von Steyr suddenly wheel in his saddle and lash the woman across the face with his doubled bridle.

She cringed and fell to her knees, screaming and seizing his stirrup.

"Get out, damn you!" roared Von Steyr. "Here—I'll settle this now. Shoot that French dog!"

"My husband, O God!" screamed the woman, struggling in the dust. In a second she had fallen among the horses; a trooper spurred forward and raised his revolver, but the man with the rope around his neck sprang right at him, hanging to the saddle-bow, and tearing the rider with teeth and nails. Twice Von Steyr tried to pass his sabre through him; an Uhlan struck him with a lance-butt, another buried a lance-point in his back, but he clung like a wild-cat to his man, burying his teeth in the Uhlan's face, deeper, deeper, till the Uhlan reeled back and fell crashing into the road.

"Fire!" shrieked Tricasse—"the woman's dead!"

Through the crash and smoke they could see the Uhlans staggering, sinking, floundering about. A mounted figure passed like a flash through the mist, another plunged after, a third wheeled and flew back around the bend. But the rest were doomed. Already the franc-tireurs were among them, whining with ferocity; the scene was sickening. One by one the battered bodies of the Uhlans were torn from their frantic horses until only one remained—Von Steyr—drenched with blood, his sabre flashing above his head. They pulled him from his horse, but he still raged, his bloodshot eyes flaring, his teeth gleaming under shrunken lips. They beat him with musket-stocks, they hurled stones at him, they struck him terrible blows with clubbed lances, and he yelped like a mad cur and snapped at them, even when they had him down, even when they shot into his twisting body. And at last they exterminated the rabid thing that ran among them.

But the butchery was not ended; around the bend of the road galloped more Uhlans, halted, wheeled, and galloped back with harsh cries. The cries were echoed from above and below; the franc-tireurs were surrounded.

Then Tricasse raised his smeared sabre, and, bending, took the dead woman by the wrist, lifting her limp, trampled body from the dust. He began to mutter, holding his sabre above his head, and the men took up the savage chant, standing close together in the road:

"'Ca ira! Ca ira!'"

It was the horrible song of the Terror.

"'Que faut-il au Republicain? Du fer, du plomb, et puis du pain!

"'Du fer pour travailler, Du plomb pour nous venger, Et du pain pour nos freres!'"

And the fierce voices sang:

"'Dansons la Carmagnole! Dansons la Carmagnole! Ca ira! Ca ira! Tous les cochons a la lanterne! Ca ira! Ca ira! Tous les Prussiens, on les pendra!'"

The road trembled under the advancing cavalry; they surged around the bend, a chaos of rearing horses and levelled lances; a ring of fire around the little group of franc-tireurs, a cry from the whirl of flame and smoke:

"France!"

So they died.



XXVIII

THE BRACONNIER

Lorraine had turned ghastly white; Jack's shocked face was colourless as he drew her away from the ridge with him into the forest. The appalling horror had stunned her; her knees gave way, she stumbled, but Jack held her up by main force, pushing the undergrowth aside and plunging straight on towards the thickest depths of the woods. He had not the faintest idea where he was; he only knew that for the moment it was absolutely necessary for them to get as far away as possible from the Uhlans and their butcher's work. Lorraine knew it, too; she tried to recover her coolness and her strength.

"Here is another road," she said, faintly; "Jack—I—I am not strong—I am—a—little—faint—" Tears were running over her cheeks.

Jack peered out through the trees into the narrow wood-road. Immediately a man hailed him from somewhere among the trees, and he shrank back, teeth set, eyes fixed in desperation.

"Who are you?" came the summons again in French. Jack did not answer. Presently a man in a blue blouse, carrying a whip, stepped out into the road from the bushes on the farther side of the slope.

"Hallo!" he called, softly.

Jack looked at him. The man returned his glance with a friendly and puzzled smile.

"What do you want?" asked Jack, suspiciously.

"Parbleu! what do you want yourself?" asked the peasant, and showed his teeth in a frank laugh.

Jack was silent.

The peasant's eyes fell on Lorraine, leaning against a tree, her blanched face half hidden under the masses of her hair. "Oho!" he said—"a woman!"

Without the least hesitation he came quickly across the road and close up to Jack.

"Thought you might be one of those German spies," he said. "Is the lady ill? Coeur Dieu! but she is white! Monsieur, what has happened? I am Brocard—Jean Brocard; they know me here in the forest—"

"Eh!" broke in Jack—"you say you are Brocard the poacher?"

"Hey! That's it—Brocard, braconnier—at your service. And you are the young nephew of the Vicomte de Morteyn, and that is the little chatelaine De Nesville! Coeur Dieu! Have the Prussians brutalized you, too? Answer me, Monsieur Marche—I know you and I know the little chatelaine—oh, I know!—I, who have watched you at your pretty love-making there in the De Nesville forest, while I was setting my snares for pheasants and hares! Dame! One must live! Yes, I am Brocard—I do not lie. I have taken enough game from your uncle in my time; can I be of service to his nephew?"

He took off his cap with a merry smile, entirely frank, almost impudent. Jack could have hugged him; he did not; he simply told him the exact truth, word by word, slowly and without bitterness, his arm around Lorraine, her head on his shoulder.

"Coeur Dieu!" muttered Brocard, gazing pityingly at Lorraine; "I've half a mind to turn franc-tireur myself and drill holes in the hides of these Prussian swine!"

He stepped out into the road and beckoned Jack and Lorraine. When they came to his side he pointed to a stone cottage, low and badly thatched, hidden among the trunks of the young beech growth. A team of horses harnessed to a carriage was standing before the door; smoke rose from the dilapidated chimney.

"I have a guest," he said; "you need not fear him. Come!"

In a dozen steps they entered the low doorway, Brocard leading, Lorraine leaning heavily on Jack's shoulder.

"Pst! There is a thick-headed Englishman in the next room; let him sleep in peace," murmured Brocard.

He threw a blanket over the bed, shoved the logs in the fireplace with his hobnailed boots until the sparks whirled upward, and the little flames began to rustle and snap.

Lorraine sank down on the bed, covering her head with her arms; Jack dropped into a chair by the fire, looking miserably from Lorraine to Brocard.

The latter clasped his big rough hands between his knees and leaned forward, chewing a stem of a dead leaf, his bright eyes fixed on the reviving fire.

"Morteyn! Morteyn!" he repeated; "it exists no longer. There are many dead there—dead in the garden, in the court, on the lawn—dead floating in the pond, the river—dead rotting in the thickets, the groves, the forest. I saw them—I, Brocard the poacher."

After a moment he resumed:

"There were more poachers than Jean Brocard in Morteyn. I saw the Prussian officers stand in the carrefours and shoot the deer as they ran in, a line of soldiers beating the woods behind them. I saw the Saxons laugh as they shot at the pheasants and partridges; I saw them firing their revolvers at rabbits and hares. They brought to their camp-fires a great camp-wagon piled high with game—boars, deer, pheasants, and hares. For that I hated them. Perhaps I touched one or two of them while I was firing at white blackbirds—I really cannot tell."

He turned an amused yellow eye on Jack, but his face sobered the next moment, and he continued: "I heard the fusillade on the Saint-Lys highway; I did not go to inquire if they were amusing themselves. Ma foi! I myself keep away from Uhlans when God permits. And so these Uhlan wolves got old Tricasse at last. Zut! C'est embetant! And poor old Passerat, too—and Brun, and all the rest! Tonnerre de Dieu! I—but, no—no! I am doing very well—I, Jean Brocard, poacher; I am doing quite well, in my little way."

An ugly curling of his lip, a glimpse of two white teeth—that was all Jack saw; but he understood that the poacher had probably already sent more than one Prussian to his account.

"That's all very well," he said, slowly—he had little sympathy with guerilla assassination—"but I'd rather hear how you are going to get us out of the country and through the Prussian lines."

"You take much for granted," laughed the poacher. "Now, did I offer to do any such thing?"

"But you will," said Jack, "for the honour of the Province and the vicomte, whose game, it appears, has afforded you both pleasure and profit."

"Coeur Dieu!" cried Brocard, laughing until his bright eyes grew moist. "You have spoken the truth, Monsieur Marche. But you have not added what I place first of all; it is for the gracious chatelaine of the Chateau de Nesville that I, Jean Brocard, play at hazard with the Prussians, the stakes being my skin. I will bring you through the lines; leave it to me."

Before Jack could speak again the door of the next room opened, and a man appeared, dressed in tweeds, booted and spurred, and carrying a travelling-satchel. There was a moment's astonished silence.

"Marche!" cried Archibald Grahame; "what the deuce are you doing here?" They shook hands, looking questioningly at each other.

"Times have changed since we breakfasted by candle-light at Morteyn," said Jack, trying to regain his coolness.

"I know—I know," said Grahame, sympathetically. "It's devilish rough on you all—on Madame de Morteyn. I can never forget her charming welcome. Dear me, but this war is disgusting; isn't it now? And what the devil are you doing here? Heavens, man, you're a sight!"

Lorraine sat up on the bed at the sound of the voices. When Grahame saw her, saw her plight—the worn shoes, the torn, stained bodice and skirt, the pale face and sad eyes—he was too much affected to speak. Jack told him their situation in a dozen words; the sight of Lorraine's face told the rest.

"Now we'll arrange that," cried Grahame. "Don't worry, Marche. Pray do not alarm yourself, Mademoiselle de Nesville, for I have a species of post-chaise at the door and a pair of alleged horses, and the whole outfit is at your disposal; indeed it is, and so am I. Come now!—and so am I." He hesitated, and then continued: "I have passes and papers, and enough to get you through a dozen lines. Now, where do you wish to go?"

"When are you to start?" replied Jack, gratefully.

"Say in half an hour. Can Mademoiselle de Nesville stand it?"

"Yes, thank you," said Lorraine, with a tired, quaint politeness that made them smile.

"Then we wish to get as near to the French Army as we can," said Jack. "I have a mission of importance. If you could drive us to the Luxembourg frontier we would be all right—if we had any money."

"You shall have everything," cried Grahame; "you shall be driven where you wish. I'm looking for a battle, but I can't seem to find one. I've been driving about this wreck of a country for the last three days; I missed Amonvillers on the 18th, and Rezonville two days before. I saw the battles of Reichshofen and Borney. The Germans lost three thousand five hundred men at Beaumont, and I was not there either. But there's a bigger thing on the carpet, somewhere near the Meuse, and I'm trying to find out where and when. I've wasted a lot of time loafing about Metz. I want to see something on a larger scale, not that the Metz business isn't large enough—two hundred thousand men, six hundred cannon—and the Red Prince—licking their chops and getting up an appetite for poor old Bazaine and his battered, diseased, starved, disheartened army, caged under the forts and citadel of a city scarcely provisioned for a regiment."

Lorraine, sitting on the edge of the bed, looked at him silently, but her eyes were full of a horror and anguish that Grahame could not help seeing.

"The Emperor is with the army yet," he said, cheerfully. "Who knows what may happen in the next twenty-four hours? Mademoiselle de Nesville, there are many shots to be fired yet for the honour of France."

"Yes," said Lorraine.

Instinctively Brocard and Grahame moved towards the door and out into the road. It was perhaps respect for the grief of this young French girl that sobered their faces and sent them off to discuss plans and ways and means of getting across the Luxembourg frontier without further delay. Jack, left alone with Lorraine in the dim, smoky room, rose and drew her to the fire.

"Don't be unhappy," he said. "The tide of fortune must turn soon; this cannot go on. We will find the Emperor and do our part. Don't look that way, Lorraine, my darling!" He took her in his arms. She put both arms around his neck, and hid her face.

For a while he held her, watching the fire with troubled eyes. The room grew darker; a wind arose among the forest trees, stirring dried leaves on brittle stems; the ashes on the hearth drifted like gray snowflakes.

Her stillness began to trouble him. He bent in the dusk to see her face. She was asleep. Terror, pity, anguish, the dreadful uncertainty, had strained her child's nerves to the utmost; after that came the deep fatigue that follows torture, and she lay in his arms, limp, pallid, exhausted. Her sleep was almost the unconsciousness of coma; she scarcely breathed.

The fire on the hearth went out; the smoking embers glimmered under feathery ashes. Grahame entered, carrying a lantern.

"Come," he whispered. "Poor little thing!—can't I help you, Marche? Wait; here's a rug. So—wrap it around her feet. Can you carry her? Then follow; here, touch my coat—I'm going to put out the light in my lantern. Now—gently. Here we are."

Jack climbed into the post-chaise; Grahame, holding Lorraine in his arms, leaned in, and Jack took her again. She had not awakened.

"Brocard and I are going to sit in front," whispered Grahame. "Is all right within?"

"Yes," nodded Jack.

The chaise moved on for a moment, then suddenly stopped with a jerk.

Jack heard Grahame whisper, "Sit still, you fool! I've got passes; sit still!"

"Let go!" murmured Brocard.

"Sit still!" repeated Grahame, in an angry whisper; "it's all right, I tell you. Be silent!"

There was a noiseless struggle, a curse half breathed, then a figure slipped from the chaise into the road.

Grahame sank back. "Marche, that damned poacher will hang us all. What am I to do?"

"What is it?" asked Jack, in a scarcely audible voice.

"Can't you hear? There's an Uhlan in the road in front. That fool means to kill him."

Jack strained his eyes in the darkness; the road ahead was black and silent.

"You can't see him," whispered Grahame. "Brocard caught the distant rattle of his lance in the stirrup. He's gone to kill him, the bloodthirsty imbecile!"

"To shoot him?" asked Jack, aghast.

"No; he's got his broad wood-knife—that's the way these brutes kill. Hark! Good God!"

A scream rang through the forest; something was coming towards them, too—a horse, galloping, galloping, pounding, thundering past—a frantic horse that tossed its head and tore on through the night, mane flying, bridle loose. And there, crouched on the saddle, two men swayed, locked in a death-clench—an Uhlan with ghostly face and bared teeth, and Brocard, the poacher, cramped and clinging like a panther to his prey, his broad knife flashing in the gloom.

In a second they were gone; far away in the forest the hoof strokes echoed farther and farther, duller, duller, then ceased.

"Drive on," muttered Jack, with lips that could barely form the words.



XXIX

THE MESSAGE OF THE FLAG

It was dawn when Lorraine awoke, stifling a cry of dismay. At the same moment she saw Jack, asleep, huddled into a corner of the post-chaise, his bloodless, sunken face smeared with the fine red dust that drifted in from the creaking wheels. Grahame, driving on the front seat, heard her move.

"Are you better?" he asked, cheerfully.

"Yes, thank you; I am better. Where are we?"

Grahame's face sobered.

"I'll tell you the truth," he said; "I don't know, and I can't find out. One thing is certain—we've passed the last German post, that is all I know. We ought to be near the frontier."

He looked back at Jack, smiled again, and lowered his voice:

"It's fortunate we have passed the German lines, because that last cavalry outpost took all my papers and refused to return them. I haven't an idea what to do now, except to go on as far as we can. I wish we could find a village; the horses are not exhausted, but they need rest."

Lorraine listened, scarcely conscious of what he said. She leaned over Jack, looking down into his face, brushing the dust from his brow with her finger-tips, smoothing his hair, with a timid, hesitating glance at Grahame, who understood and gravely turned his back.

Jack slept. She nestled down, pressing her soft, cool cheek close to his; her eyes drooped; her lips parted. So they slept together, cheek to cheek.

A mist drove across the meadows; from the plains, dotted with poplars, a damp wind blew in puffs, driving the fog before it until the blank vapour dulled the faint morning light and the dawn faded into a colourless twilight. Spectral poplars, rank on rank, loomed up in the mist, endless rows of them, fading from sight as the vapours crowded in, appearing again as the fog thinned in a current of cooler wind.

Grahame, driving slowly, began to nod in the thickening fog. At moments he roused himself; the horses walked on and the wheels creaked in the red dust. Hour after hour passed, but it grew no lighter. Drowsy and listless-eyed the horses toiled up and down the little hills, and moved stiffly on along the interminable road, shrouded in a gray fog that hid the very road-side shrubbery from sight, choked thicket and grove, and blotted the grimy carriage windows.

Jack was awakened with startling abruptness by Grahame, who shook his shoulders, leaning into the post-chaise from the driver's seat.

"There's something in front, Marche," he said. "We've fallen in with a baggage convoy, I fancy. Listen! Don't you hear the camp-wagons? Confound this fog! I can't see a rod ahead."

Lorraine, also now wide awake, leaned from the window. The blank vapour choked everything. Jack rubbed his eyes; his limbs ached; he could scarcely move. Somebody was running on the road in front—the sound of heavy boots in the dust came nearer and nearer.

"Look out!" shouted Grahame, in French; "there's a team here in the road! Passez au large!"

At the sound of his voice phantoms surged up in the mist around them; from every side faces looked into the carriage windows, passing, repassing, disappearing, only to appear again—ghostly, shadowy, spectral.

"Soldiers!" muttered Jack.

At the same instant Grahame seized the lines and wheeled his horses just in time to avoid collision with a big wagon in front. As the post-chaise passed, more wagons loomed up in the fog, one behind another; soldiers took form around them, voices came to their ears, dulled by the mist.

Suddenly a pale shaft of light streamed through the fog above; the restless, shifting vapours glimmered; a dazzling blot grew from the mist. It was the sun. Little by little the landscape became more distinct; the pallid, watery sky lightened; a streak of blue cut the zenith. Everywhere in the road great, lumbering wagons stood, loaded with straw; the sickly morning light fell on silent files of infantry, lining the road on either hand.

"It's a convoy of wounded," said Grahame. "We're in the middle of it. Shall we go back?"

A wagon in front of them started on; at the first jolt a cry sounded from the straw, another, another—the deep sighs of the dying, the groans of the stricken, the muttered curses of teamsters—rose in one terrible plaint. Another wagon started—the wounded wailed; another started—another—another—and the long train creaked on, the air vibrating with the weak protestations of miserable, mangled creatures tossing their thin arms towards the sky. And now, too, the soldiers were moving out into the road-side bushes, unslinging rifles and fixing bayonets; a mounted officer galloped past, shouting something; other mounted officers followed; a bugle sounded persistently from the distant head of the column.

Everywhere soldiers were running along the road now, grouping together under the poplar-trees, heads turned to the plain. Some teamsters pushed an empty wagon out beyond the line of trees and overturned it; others stood up in their wagons, reins gathered, long whips swinging. The wounded moaned incessantly; some sat up in the straw, heads turned also towards the dim, gray plain.

"It's an attack," said Grahame, coolly. "Marche, we're in for it now!"

After a moment, he added, "What did I tell you? Look there!"

Out on the plain, where the mist was clearing along the edge of a belt of trees, something was moving.

"What is it?" asked Lorraine, in a scarcely audible voice.

Before Grahame could speak a tumult of cries and groans burst out along the line of wagons; a bugle clanged furiously; the teamsters shouted and pointed with their whips.

Out of the shadow of the grove two glittering double lines of horsemen trotted, halted, formed, extended right and left, and trotted on again. To the right another darker and more compact square of horsemen broke into a gallop, swinging a thicket of lances above their heads, from which fluttered a mass of black and white pennons.

"Cuirassiers and Uhlans!" muttered Grahame, under his breath. He stood up in his seat; Jack rose also, straining his eyes, but Lorraine hid her face in her hands and crouched in the chaise, her head buried in the cushions.

The silence was enervating; even the horses turned their gentle eyes wonderingly to that line of steel and lances; even the wounded, tremulous, haggard, held their breath between clenched teeth and stiff, swollen lips.

"Nom de Dieu! Serrez les rangs, tas de bleus!" yelled an officer, riding along the edge of the road, revolver in one hand, naked sabre flashing in the other.

A dozen artillerymen were pushing a mitrailleuse up behind the overturned wagon. It stuck in the ditch.

"A nous, la ligne!" they shouted, dragging at the wheels until a handful of fantassins ran out and pulled the little death machine into place.

"Du calme! Du calme! Ne tirez pas trop vite, menagez vos cartouches! Tenez ferme, mes enfants!" said an old officer, dismounting and walking coolly out beyond the line of trees.

"Oui! oui! comptez sur nous! Vive le Colonel!" shouted the soldiers, shaking their chassepots in the air.

On came the long lines, distinct now—the blue and yellow of the Uhlans, the white and scarlet of the cuirassiers, plain against the gray trees and grayer pastures. Suddenly a level sheet of flame played around the stalled wagons; the smoke gushed out over the dark ground; the air split with the crash of rifles. In the uproar bugles blew furiously and the harsh German cavalry trumpets, peal on peal, nearer, nearer, nearer, answered their clangour.

"Hourra! Preussen!"

The deep, thundering shout rose hoarsely through the rifles' roaring fusillade; horses reared; teamsters lashed and swore, and the rattle of harness and wheel broke out and was smothered in the sheeted crashing of the volleys and the shock of the coming charge.