ry of this gray old world?

Franz seized the girl's arm. She knew it would be undignified to resist.
Kissing Dalroy again, she whispered a last choking farewell, and
suffered her guide to take her where he willed. She walked with
stumbling feet. Her eyes were dimmed with tears; but, sustained by the
pride of her race, she refused to sob, and bit her lower lip in
dauntless resolve not to yield.

The rain was beating down now in heavy gusts. Von Halwig, if he had no
concern for the comfort of the troopers, had a good deal for his own.

"Damn the weather!" he grunted. "Come into the bar. You can walk, I
suppose?"

He turned on the torch, which was controlled by a sliding button, and
saw how the prisoner was secured. Then he flashed the light into the
interior of the barn. It was a ramshackle place at the best, and looked
peculiarly forlorn after the rummaging it had undergone since the fight,
a recent picket having evidently torn down stalls and mangers to provide
materials for a fire. Part of a long sloping ladder had been consumed
for that purpose, so that an open trap-door in the boarded floor of an
upper storey was inaccessible. The barn itself was unusually lofty,
running to a height of twenty feet or more. There were no windows. Some
rats, tempted out already by the oats spilled from the horses'
nose-bags, scuttled away from the light. Through the trap-door the noise
of the rain pounding on a shingle roof came with a curious hollowness.

Von Halwig did not extinguish the lamp, but tucked it under his left
arm. He lighted a cigarette. With each movement of his body the beam of
light shifted. Now it played on the wall, against which Dalroy leaned,
because the cramped state of his arms was already becoming irksome; now
it shone through the doorway, forming a sort of luminous blur in the
rain, now it dwelt on the Englishman, standing there in his worn blouse,
baggy breeches, and sabots, an old flannel shirt open at the neck, and a
month's growth of beard on cheeks and chin. The hat which Irene made fun
of had been tilted at a rakish angle when the corporal removed the
cloak. Certainly he was changed in essentials since he and the Guardsman
last met face to face on the platform at Aix-la-Chapelle.

But the eyes were unalterable. They were still resolute, and strangely
calm, because he had nerved himself not to flinch before this strutting
popinjay.

"You wonder why I have brought you in here, eh?" began Von Halwig,