. "If the devils have done this _here_--so close to us," he
burst out, and covered his face.

An old woman walked toward us down the road. Rechamp jumped up and ran
to meet her. "Why, Marie Jeanne, what are you doing in these ruins?" The
old woman looked at him with unastonished eyes. She seemed incapable of
any surprise. "They left my house standing. I'm glad to see Monsieur,"
she simply said. We followed her to the one house left in the waste of
stones. It was a two-roomed cottage, propped against a cow-stable,
but fairly decent, with a curtain in the window and a cat on the sill.
Rechamp caught me by the arm and pointed to the door-panel. "Oberst von
Scharlach" was scrawled on it. He turned as white as your table-cloth,
and hung on to me a minute; then he spoke to the old woman. "The
officers were quartered here: that was the reason they spared your
house?"

She nodded. "Yes: I was lucky. But the gentlemen must come in and have a
mouthful."

Rechamp's finger was on the name. "And this one--this was their
commanding officer?"

"I suppose so. Is it somebody's name?" She had evidently never
speculated on the meaning of the scrawl that had saved her.

"You remember him--their captain? Was his name Scharlach?" Rechamp
persisted.

Under its rich weathering the old woman's face grew as pale as his.
"Yes, that was his name--I heard it often enough."

"Describe him, then. What was he like? Tall and fair? They're all
that--but what else? What in particular?"

She hesitated, and then said: "This one wasn't fair. He was dark, and
had a scar that drew up the left corner of his mouth."

Rechamp turned to me. "It's the same. I heard the men describing him at
Moulins."

We followed the old woman into the house, and while she gave us some
bread and wine she told us about the wrecking of the village and the
factory. It was one of the most damnable stories I've heard yet. Put
together the worst of the typical horrors and you'll have a fair idea of
it. Murder, outrage, torture: Scharlach's programme seemed to be
fairly comprehensive. She ended off by saying: "His orderly showed me a
silver-mounted flute he always travelled with, and a beautiful paint-box
mounted in silver too. Before he left he sat down on my door-step and
made a painting of the ruins...."

Soon after leaving this place of death we got to the second lines and
our troubles began. We had to do a lot of talking to get through the
lines, but what Rechamp had