the piano, and began softly playing, with the
hush-pedal on. The two women drew close around her. Suddenly she
released the pedal, and lifted her hands from the keys, as if they
burned her. One string was still faintly singing which she had not
touched, the string of the key that the Commandant had struck.

"Mercy, child, what ails you?" exclaimed Mrs. Bracher. "You've all got
the fidgets to-night."

"That string again," said the girl.

She rose from the piano, and went out into the night. They heard her
footsteps on the road.

"Hilda, Hilda," called Scotch, loudly.

"Leave her alone, she is fey," said Mrs. Bracher. "I know her in these
moods. You can't interfere. You must let her go."

"We can at least see where she goes," urged Scotch.

They followed her at a distance. She went swiftly up the road, and
straight to the railway tracks. She entered the house, the dark, wrecked
house, where from the second story window, a perpetual look-out was
kept, like the watch of the Vestal Virgins. They came to the open door,
and heard her ascend to the room of the vigil.

"You must come," they heard her say, "come at once."

"No, no," answered the voice of the Commandant, "I am on duty here. But
you--what brings you here? You cannot stay. Go at once. I order you."

"I shall not go till you go," the girl replied in expressionless tones.

"I tell you to go," repeated the Commandant in angry but suppressed
voice.

"You can shoot me," said the girl, "but I will not go without you.
Come--" her voice turned to pleading--"Come, while there is time."

"My time has come," said the Commandant. "It is here--my end."

"Then for me, too," she said, "but I have come to take you from it."

There was a silence of a few seconds, then the sound of a chair scraping
the floor, heavy boots on the boarding, and the two, Commandant and
girl, descending the stairs. Unastonished, they stepped out and found
the two women waiting.

"We must save the girl," said the Commandant. "Come, run for it, all of
you, run!"

He pushed them forward with his hands, and back down the road they had
come. He ran and they ran till they reached their dwelling, and entered,
and stood at the north window, looking over toward the dim house from
which they had escaped. Out from the still night of darkness, came a low
thunder from beyond the Yser. In the tick of a pulse-beat, the moaning
of a shell throbbed on the air and, with instant vibrancy, the singing
st