the
window. Heavy steps on the stairs; a Staff Officer entered the
room, looked surprised to see me, and asked who I was. The
Commandant justified his permission to let me remain by eulogising
the noble work upon which I was engaged, but though the Staff
Officer's objections were hushed, he did not enthuse over my coming.

With intent to convince him that I was already hard at work I told
him of the terrible destruction of the castle and church at Labiau,
which I would visit on the following day.

"I have a sergeant below who was there, and I will have him come
in," he said.

The sergeant entered, clicked his heels at attention; a doughty old
warrior, small and wiry, not a civilian thrust into field-grey, but
a soldier, every inch of him, a Prussian soldier, turned to stone
in the presence of his superior officers, his sharp clear eyes
strained on some point in space directly ahead. He might have
stepped out of the pages of the Seven Years' War.

Nobody spoke. The pale yellow light of the oil lamp on the
Commandants desk fell on the military faces, figures and trappings
of the men in the room. The shuffling tramp of soldiers in the
dark street below died away in the direction of the river. I felt
the military tenseness of the scene. I realised that I was inside
the German lines on a bluff that was succeeding but might collapse
at any moment.

Feeling that a good investigating committee should display
initiative I broke the silence by questioning the little sergeant,
and I began on a line which I felt would please the Commandant,
"You were at Labiau during the fighting?" I asked.

"I was, sir!"

He did not move a muscle except those necessary for speech. His
eyes were still rigid on that invisible something directly ahead.
He clearly was conscious of the importance of his position, as
informant to a stranger before his superior officers.

"I have heard that the beautiful old castle and the magnificent old
church were destroyed," I continued.

"You know of this, of course?"

"Ja, ja, that is true! Our wonderful artillery knocked them to
pieces when we drove the Russians out in panic!"

The sergeant was not the only one looking into space now. The
Staff Officer relieved the situation by dismissing him from the
room, whereupon the Commandant sharply bade the orderly conduct me
to my night lodgings.

"No Iron Cross for the little sergeant," I reflected, as we
stumbled through the cooked old stree