sac was in German hands, under German power, governed by
German law. The Uhlans scoured the country as clean as possible,
but the franc-tireurs roamed from forest to forest, sometimes
gallantly facing martyrdom, sometimes looting, burning,
pillaging, and murdering. If Germans maintain that the only good
franc-tireur is a dead franc-tireur, they are not always
justified. Let them sit first in judgment on Andreas Hofer.
England had Hereward; America, Harry Lee; and, when the South is
ready to acknowledge Mosby and Quantrell of the same feather, it
will be time for France to blush for her franc-tireurs. Noble and
ignoble, patriots and cowards, the justified and the misguided
wore the straight kepi and the sheepskin jacket. All figs in
Spain are not poisoned.

With the fall of the Chateau Morteyn, the war in Lorraine would
degenerate into a combat between picquets of Uhlans and roving
franc-tireurs. There would be executions of spies, vengeance on
peasants, examples made of franc-tireurs, and all the horrors of
irregular warfare. Jack knew this; he understood it perfectly
when the muddy French infantry tramped out of the Chateau Morteyn
and vanished among the dark hills in the rain.

For himself, had he been alone, there would have been nothing to
keep him in the devastated province. Indeed, considering his
peculiarly strained relations with the Uhlans of Rickerl's
regiment, it behooved him to get across the Belgian frontier
very promptly.

Now he not only had Lorraine, he had the woman who loved him and
who was ready to sacrifice herself and him too for the honour of
France. She lived for one thing--the box, with its pitiful
contents, its secrets of aerial navigation and destruction, must
be placed at the service of France. The government was France
now, and the Empress was the government. Lorraine knew nothing of
the reasons her father had had for his hatred of the Emperor and
the Empire. Personal grievances, even when those grievances were
her father's, even though they might be justified, would never
deter her from placing the secrets that might aid, might save,
France with the man who, at that moment, in her eyes, represented
the safety, security, the very existence of the land she loved.

Jack knew this. Whether she was right or not did not occur to him
to ask. But the irony of it, the grim necessity of such a fate,
staggered him--a daughter seeking her father at the verge of his
ruin--a child, long lost, forgo