the quaint bits of plate that had formed their nuptial dowers cast aside in derision or trampled into a battered heap.  They saw the pet lamb of their infants, the silver ear-rings of their brides, the brave tankards they had drunk their marriage wine in, the tame bird that flew to their whistle, all seized for food or seized for spoil.  They saw all this, and had to stand by with mute tongues and passive hands, lest any glance of wrath or gesture of revenge should bring the leaden bullet in their children’s throats or the yellow flame amid their homesteads.  Greater agony the world cannot hold.

Under the porch of the cottage, by the sycamores, one group stood and looked, silent and very still:  Bernadou, erect, pale, calm, with a fierce scorn burning in his eyes; Margot, quiet because he wished her so, holding to her the rosy and golden beauty of her son; Reine Allix, with a patient horror on her face, her figure drawn to its full height, and her hands holding to her breast the crucifix.  They stood thus, waiting they knew not what, only resolute to show no cowardice and meet no shame.

Behind them was the dull, waning glow of the wood fire on the hearth which had been the centre of all their hopes and joys; before them the dim, dark country, and the woe-stricken faces of their neighbours, and the moving soldiery with their torches, and the quivering forms of the half-dying horses.

Suddenly a voice arose from the armed mass:  “Bring me the peasant hither.”

Bernadou was seized by several hands and forced and dragged from his door out to the place where the leader of the uhlans sat on a white charger that shook and snorted blood in its exhaustion.  Bernadou cast off the alien grasp that held him, and stood erect before his foes.  He was no longer pale, and his eyes were clear and steadfast.

“You look less a fool than the rest,” said the Prussian commander.  “You know this country well?”

“Well!” The country in whose fields and woodlands he had wandered from his infancy, and whose every meadow-path and wayside tree and flower-sown brook he knew by heart as a lover knows the lines of his mistress’s face!

“You have arms here?” pursued the German.

“We had.”

“What have you done with them?”

“If I had had my way, you would not need ask.  You would have felt them.”

The Prussian looked at him keenly, doing homage to the boldness of the answer.  “Will you confess where they are?”

“No.”

“You know the penalty for concealment of arms is death?”

“You have made it so.”

“We have, and Prussian will is French law.  You are a bold man; you merit death.  But still, you know the country well?”

Bernadou smiled, as a mother might smile were any foolish enough to ask her if she remembered the look her dead child’s face had worn.

“If you know it well,” pursued the Prussian, “I will give you a chance.  Lay hold of my stirrup-leather and be lashed to it, and show me straight as the crow flies to where the weapons are hidden.  If you do, I will leave you your life.  If you do not—­”