“You know,” he said, “that we are the sacrificed corps, and we have known it from the first—­went into the campaign knowing it.  We have been fighting a force ten times superior in numbers, and retreating, doing rear-guard action, whether we were really outfought or not—­to draw the Germans where Joffre wants them.  I reckon we’ve got them there.  It is great strategy-Kitchener’s, you know.”

Whether any of the corporal’s ideas had any relation to facts I shall never know until history tells me, but I can assure you that, as I followed the corporal downstairs, I looked about my house—­and, well, I don’t deny it, it seemed to me a doomed thing, and I was sorry for it.  However, as I let him out into the road again, I pounded into myself lots of things like “It hasn’t happened yet”; “Sufficient unto the day”; and, “What isn’t to be, won’t be”; and found I was quite calm.  Luckily I did not have much time to myself, for I had hardly sat down quietly when there was another tap at the door and I opened to find an officer of the bicycle corps standing there.

“Captain Edwards’s compliments,” he said, “and will you be so kind as to explain to me exactly where you think the Uhlans are hidden?” I told him that if he would come down the road a little way with me I would show him.

“Wait a moment,” he said, holding the door.  “You are not afraid?” I told him that I was not.

“My orders are not to expose you uselessly.  Wait there a minute.”

He stepped back into the garden, gave a quick look overhead,—­I don’t know what for, unless for a Taube.  Then he said, “Now, you will please come out into the road and keep close to the bank at the left, in the shadow.  I shall walk at the extreme right.  As soon as I get where I can see the roads ahead, at the foot of the hill, I shall ask you to stop, and please stop at once.  I don’t want you to be seen from the road below, in case any one is there.  Do you understand ?”

I said I did.  So we went into the road and walked silently down the hill.  Just before we got to the turn, he motioned me to stop and stood with his map in hand while I explained that he was to cross the road that led into Voisins, take the cart track down the hill past the washhouse on his left, and turn into the wood road on that side.  At each indication he said, “I have it.”  When I had explained, he simply said, “Rough road?”

I said it was, very, and wet in the dryest weather.

“Wooded all the way?” he asked.

I told him that it was, and, what was more, so winding that you could not see ten feet ahead anywhere between here and Conde.

“Humph,” he said.  “Perfectly clear, thank you very much.  Please wait right there a moment.”

He looked up the hill behind him, and made a gesture in the air with his hand above his head.  I turned to look up the hill also.  I saw the corporal at the gate repeat the gesture; then a big bicycle corps, four abreast, guns on their backs, slid round the corner and came gliding down the hill.  There was not a sound, not the rattle of a chain or a pedal.