the stairs.
Dapper and smart to a certain extent, though somewhat dishevelled by
the charge in which he had taken a share; arrogant, like the majority
of German officers, and bearing about his figure something which seemed
familiar to Henri, he stopped at that exit, and, looking up the
stairway, peered hard at the enemy.

"Above, there!" he called, and Henri and Jules instantly recognized his
voice.

"Our friend of Ruhleben--the fellow who was so anxious to shoot us the
other day when we tumbled into his bivouac in the forest. Well, the
shooting will not be all on one side now," grinned Jules, his lips
close to Henri's ear, as they both peered over the top of the barricade.

"Above, there!" the German officer snapped again. "Ah! You will not
answer, then; though I know well enough that Frenchmen are there.
Well, let it be so! But don't say that I have not warned you. I give
you one minute to come down and surrender--after that, I will blow you
to pieces."

"How very violent!" laughed Jules, and his voice, reaching the ear of
that German officer, sent the blood flushing to his cheeks and his feet
stamping with rage. "How very violent! 'Pon my word, Henri, this
fellow needs a lesson, for every time we've listened to him he's been
going to do something desperate--something desperate, that is, to other
people. Shall we answer the beggar?"

"Yes. We'll do the square thing. A moment ago I had a mind to remain
quite still and silent, and let the fellow find out for himself what
sort of a place we had got; but we'll be quite fair with him, and then
there can't be any complaints. Hallo, below there!" he called; "stand
where you are, and don't move forward or one of my men will shoot you.
You ask us to surrender, eh?"

"Ask you!" came the arrogant answer. "Not at all--I command you!"

"And we take commands only from our own people. Come and take us,"
Henri told him delightedly. "Come and take us, if you can, but I warn
you to look out for the consequences."

The man below turned about with that precision to be found in the ranks
of the Kaiser's armies, and strutted back across the hall, his figure
lit up by the beams of light entering through shafts by which the
chamber was ventilated. In less than a minute he had rejoined his men,
and for a while Henri and his friends watched as a consultation was
held. Then, of a sudden, the men dispersed and were lost to view for
quite five minutes.

It was perhaps