“If I do not?”

“You will be shot.”

Bernadou was silent; his eyes glanced through the mass of soldiers to the little cottage under the trees opposite.  The two there were straining to behold him, but the soldiers pushed them back, so that in the flare of the torches they could not see, nor in the tumult hear.  He thanked God for it.

“Your choice?” asked the uhlan, impatiently, after a moment’s pause.

Bernadou’s lips were white, but they did not tremble as he answered, “I am no traitor.”  And his eyes, as he spoke, went softly to the little porch where the light glowed from that hearth beside which he would never again sit with the creatures he loved around him.

The German looked at him.  “Is that a boast, or a fact?”

“I am no traitor,” Bernadou answered, simply, once more.

The Prussian gave a sign to his troopers.  There was the sharp report of a double shot, and Bernadou fell dead.  One bullet had pierced his brain, the other was bedded in his lungs.  The soldiers kicked aside the warm and quivering body.  It was only a peasant killed!

With a shriek that rose above the roar of the wind, and cut like steel to every human heart that beat there, Reine Allix forced her way through the throng, and fell on her knees beside him, and caught him in her arms, and laid his head upon her breast, where he had used to sleep his softest sleep in infancy and childhood.  “It is God’s will! it is God’s will!” she muttered; and then she laughed—­a laugh so terrible that the blood of the boldest there ran cold.

Margot followed her and looked, and stood dry-eyed and silent; then flung herself and the child she carried in her arms beneath the hoof of the white charger.  “End your work!” she shrieked to them.  “You have killed him—­kill us.  Have you not mercy enough for that?”

The horse, terrified and snorting blood, plunged and trampled the ground; his fore foot struck the child’s golden head and stamped its face out of all human likeness.  Some peasants pulled Margot from the lashing hoofs; she was quite dead, though neither wound nor bruise was on her.

Reine Allix neither looked nor paused.  With all her strength she had begun to drag the body of Bernadou across the threshold of his house.  “He shall lie at home, he shall lie at home,” she muttered.  She would not believe that already he was dead.  With all the force of her earliest womanhood she lifted him, and half drew, half bore him into the house that he had loved, and laid him down upon the hearth, and knelt by him, caressing him as though he were once more a child, and saying softly, “Hush!”—­for her mind was gone, and she fancied that he only slept.

Without, the tumult of the soldiery increased.  They found the arms hidden under the altar on the hill; they seized five peasants to slay them for the dire offence.  The men struggled, and would not go as the sheep to the shambles.  They were shot down in the street, before the eyes of their children.  Then the order was given to fire the place in punishment, and leave it to its fate.  The torches were flung with a laugh on the dry thatched roofs; brands snatched from the house fires on the hearths were tossed among the dwelling-houses and the barns.  The straw and timber flared alight like tow.