n as it is
dark. To-morrow our course will take us away from the frontier; it will
be too late."

"Very well, we'll try it," Jean replied, his powers of resistance
exhausted, his imagination, too, seduced by the pleasing idea of
freedom. "They can't do more than kill us."

After that he began to scrutinize more narrowly the venders who
surrounded him on every side. There were some among the comrades who had
succeeded in supplying themselves with blouse and trousers, and it was
reported that some of the charitable people of the place had regular
stocks of garments on hand, designed to assist prisoners in escaping.
And almost immediately his attention was attracted to a pretty girl, a
tall blonde of sixteen with a pair of magnificent eyes, who had on her
arm a basket containing three loaves of bread. She was not crying her
wares like the rest; an anxious, engaging smile played on her red lips,
her manner was hesitating. He looked her steadily in the face; their
glances met and for an instant remained confounded. Then she came up,
with the embarrassed smile of a girl unaccustomed to such business.

"Do you wish to buy some bread?"

He made no reply, but questioned her by an imperceptible movement of
the eyelids. On her answering yes, by an affirmative nod of the head, he
asked in a very low tone of voice:

"There is clothing?"

"Yes, under the loaves."

Then she began to cry her merchandise aloud: "Bread! bread! who'll buy
my bread?" But when Maurice would have slipped a twenty-franc piece into
her fingers she drew back her hand abruptly and ran away, leaving the
basket with them. The last they saw of her was the happy, tender look in
her pretty eyes, as in the distance she turned and smiled on them.

When they were in possession of the basket Jean and Maurice found
difficulties staring them in the face. They had strayed away from their
tent, and in their agitated condition felt they should never succeed in
finding it again. Where were they to bestow themselves? and how effect
their change of garments? It seemed to them that the eyes of the entire
assemblage were focused on the basket, which Jean carried with an
awkward air, as if it contained dynamite, and that its contents must
be plainly visible to everyone. It would not do to waste time, however;
they must be up and doing. They stepped into the first vacant tent they
came to, where each of them hurriedly slipped on a pair of trousers and
donned a blouse, havi