ded a quality of sheer horror. The man upon the threshold was
not like a man; vastly pot-bellied, so that the dingy white of his
shirt was only narrowly framed by the black of his jacket, swollen in
body to the comic point, collarless, with a staircase of unshaven
chins crushed under his great, jovial, black-mustached face, the
creature yet moved on little feet like a spinning-top on its point,
buoyantly, with the gait of a tethered balloon. He had the gestures,
the attitude upon the threshold, of a jolly companion; when he
turned, his huge, fatuous face was amiable, and creased yet with the
dregs of smiles. From the breast of his jacket he exhumed a white
handkerchief. "Arrivederci!" he called for the last time to the
interior of the house; someone within answered pleasantly; then
deliberately, with a suggestion of ceremonial and significance in the
gesture, he buried the obscenity of his countenance in the
handkerchief and blew his nose as one blows upon a trumpet.

"Tadellos!" applauded Captain Hahn enthusiastically. "He invented
that signal himself; he's the only man in the village who carries a
handkerchief. Und jetzt geht's los!"

And forthwith it went 'los'; the farce quickened to drama. A couple
of idle soldiers, rifle-less and armed only with the bayonets at
their belts, had edged near the door; others had disappeared behind
the house; Judas, mincing on his feet like a soubrette, moved briskly
away; and the corporal, tossing the wreck of his onion from him, blew
a single note on his whistle. The thin squeal of it was barely
audible thirty yards away, yet it seemed to Jovannic as though the
brief jet of sound had screamed the afternoon stillness to rags. The
two slack-bodied soldiers were suddenly swift and violent; drawn
bayonet in hand, they plunged together into the black of the door and
vanished within. Down the long street the old man let the donkey
wander on and turned, bludgeon in hand, to stare; the child and girl
with the buckets were running, and every door and window showed
startled heads. From within the cottage came uproar screams,
stamping, and the crash of furniture overset.

"You see?" There was for an instant a school-masterly touch in
Captain Hahn. "You see? They've got him; not a hitch anywhere.
Organization, method, foresight; I tell you."

From the dark door there spouted forth a tangle of folk to the hot
dust of the road that rose like smoke under their shifting feet. The
soldiers had