!"

The man staggered. His eyes were bloodshot, his clothing torn and
tattered after the explosion, with one arm swinging loose in its
sleeve. He looked at this peremptory officer in dazed fashion.
Indeed, like Henri and Jules, he had been more than half stunned, and
his wits were still wool-gathering.

"Seize a rifle! Go to a loophole, eh?" he ejaculated.

"Fool! Yes! Fight--fight for your life; fight for your Fatherland!"
Max shouted at him. "Here--here's a rifle," he went on, tearing one
from beneath the body of a fallen soldier, and handing it to him. "Now
off with you, at once!"

"At once? Fight at once?" the man stammered, while those who watched,
even in that fitful light--for the fire built by the officer in the far
corner was still burning--noticed that a dribble of blood was oozing
from the corner of his lips, "but, sir----" he began.

"No 'buts'!" bellowed Max at him; "to your duty!"

The man gripped weakly at the rifle, turned obediently to carry out the
order, and then, staggering a pace or two, fell full length on the
floor.

"Bah! A bad choice then! Well, one makes mistakes," Max said, a grim
smile on his face. "But you," he called, selecting another individual
seated on the ground, his back resting against the wall--a man whose
pallid face told that he was suffering--"you get up and go about your
duty."

As if determined that there should be no error and no backsliding, no
hesitation in this case, he applied his boot to the unfortunate
individual, and drove him from his position. "Now, you, and you, and
you! About your business! Get to your duty!"

Henri and Jules came in for his attentions, for they had crept away
from that hideous row of dead, and both gaped at him for a while in
open-mouthed amazement, wondering, indeed, whether they were
discovered, wondering in a half-bewildered sort of way what they ought
to do. For still Henri's ears buzzed, and still his brain reeled; not
so much from the explosion--for the wall separating the hall from the
corridor outside had sheltered him not a little, but reeling from the
effects of his tumble downstairs and the mad melee which had taken
place there. As for Jules, the fellow was quite light-headed, for the
bomb had sent him backward against the wall with a crash, and he too
had taken his share in that desperate fight at the top of the stairway.
He began to giggle, which was a way Jules had, and Max, happening to
catch sight of him