“Open it or I’ll break it down!” shouted the man angrily.

She laughed.

“Hammer away, my good man!  Hammer away!”

He struck with the butt-end of his gun at the closed oaken door.  But it would have resisted a battering-ram.

The forester’s daughter heard him go down the stairs again.  Then the soldiers came one after another and tried their strength against the trapdoor.  But, finding their efforts useless, they all returned to the cellar and began to talk among themselves.

The young woman heard them for a short time, then she rose, opened the door of the house; looked out into the night, and listened.

A sound of distant barking reached her ear.  She whistled just as a huntsman would, and almost immediately two great dogs emerged from the darkness, and bounded to her side.  She held them tight, and shouted at the top of her voice: 

“Hullo, father!”

A far-off voice replied: 

“Hullo, Berthine!”

She waited a few seconds, then repeated: 

“Hullo, father!”

The voice, nearer now, replied: 

“Hullo, Berthine!”

“Don’t go in front of the vent-hole!” shouted his daughter.  “There are Prussians in the cellar!”

Suddenly the man’s tall figure could be seen to the left, standing between two tree trunks.

“Prussians in the cellar?” he asked anxiously.  “What are they doing?”

The young woman laughed.

“They are the same as were here yesterday.  They lost their way, and I’ve given them free lodgings in the cellar.”

She told the story of how she had alarmed them by firing the revolver, and had shut them up in the cellar.

The man, still serious, asked: 

“But what am I to do with them at this time of night?”

“Go and fetch Monsieur Lavigne with his men,” she replied.  “He’ll take them prisoners.  He’ll be delighted.”

Her father smiled.

“So he will-delighted.”

“Here’s some soup for you,” said his daughter.  “Eat it quick, and then be off.”

The old keeper sat down at the table, and began to eat his soup, having first filled two plates and put them on the floor for the dogs.

The Prussians, hearing voices, were silent.

Long-legs set off a quarter of an hour later, and Berthine, with her head between her hands, waited.

The prisoners began to make themselves heard again.  They shouted, called, and beat furiously with the butts of their muskets against the rigid trap-door of the cellar.

Then they fired shots through the vent-hole, hoping, no doubt, to be heard by any German detachment which chanced to be passing that way.

The forester’s daughter did not stir, but the noise irritated and unnerved her.  Blind anger rose in her heart against the prisoners; she would have been only too glad to kill them all, and so silence them.