w that Goliah was a spy, that he had formerly
come and settled in the country with the purpose of acquainting himself
with its roads, its resources, the most insignificant details pertaining
to the life of its inhabitants. Men reminded one another of the time
when he had worked for Father Fouchard on his farm and of his sudden
disappearance; they spoke of the places he had had subsequently to that
over toward Beaumont and Raucourt. And now he was back again, holding
a position of some sort at the military post of Sedan, its duties
apparently not very well defined, going about from one village to
another, denouncing this man, fining that, keeping an eye to the filling
of the requisitions that made the peasants' lives a burden to them. That
very morning he had frightened the people of Remilly almost out of their
wits in relation to a delivery of flour, alleging it was short in weight
and had not been furnished within the specified time.

"You are forewarned," said Prosper in conclusion, "and now you'll know
what to do when he shows his face here--"

She interrupted him with a terrified cry.

"Do you think he will come here?"

"_Dame_! it appears to me extremely probable he will. It would show
great lack of curiosity if he didn't, since he knows he has a young one
here that he has never seen. And then there's you, besides, and you're
not so very homely but he might like to have another look at you."

She gave him an entreating glance that silenced his rude attempt at
gallantry. Charlot, awakened by the sound of their voices, had raised
his head. With the blinking eyes of one suddenly aroused from slumber he
looked about the room, and recalled the words that some idle fellow of
the village had taught him; and with the solemn gravity of a little man
of three he announced:

"Dey're loafers, de Prussians!"

His mother went and caught him frantically in her arms and seated him on
her lap. Ah! the poor little waif, at once her delight and her despair,
whom she loved with all her soul and who brought the tears to her eyes
every time she looked on him, flesh of her flesh, whom it wrung
her heart to hear the urchins with whom he consorted in the street
tauntingly call "the little Prussian!" She kissed him, as if she would
have forced the words back into his mouth.

"Who taught my darling such naughty words? It's not nice; you must not
say them again, my loved one."

Whereon Charlot, with the persistency of childhood, laug