protect his bell, they jumped over and over him, Monsieur,
pretending to prance like horses, and kept sticking him with their spurs
until his poor face was cut and swollen. We cried out for shame, but he
held up the Crucifix toward us and gently shook his head--so we turned
away weeping. But they let us bury him, Monsieur," she added, tenderly.

"Where are your parents?" Jeb asked, shuddering not alone at the tale of
barbarity, but because this young child had become so inured to these
sights that she could passively recite them.

"Dead, Monsieur," she answered, in a tone that might itself have been
dead. "Quite dead," she added, dispiritedly. "My father was summoned
with many others to Avricourt. When they came back the Germans marched
him past our house tied to the tail of one of their horses, but would
not let us speak to him; yet he turned his face so we could see a blue
cross marked upon his cheek, and then my mother fainted--she was not
well, Monsieur. That night they shot him."

Her poor little body was beginning to shake, but he drew her closer with
soothing words, while his heart was wrung by pity. For the moment he
forgot what had been uppermost in his mind: to discover through her if
this place lay within the German lines and how far were the Allies. She
took courage from his endearments and continued, although in the same
lifeless whisper:

"The next day they marched my mother and other women away, Monsieur. I
ran after her but was thrust back; yet she called telling me to hide the
children in the cellar."

"Then your mother may not be dead," he suggested hopefully.

"But yes, Monsieur. I watched them for a great way along the
road--there are no trees now, and I could see. Several times she fell;
the last time a soldier raised his gun twice, and twice brought it down.
Oh, I wanted to help her then, but they laughed and held me!"

Jeb was growing beside himself at these unheard-of barbarities, but he
managed to ask gently:

"Why are you not in the cellar now?--listen!"

The sound of iron striking stone again reached him. She understood, and
answered quietly:

"It is where they dig, Monsieur. They have been doing it since sundown;
and it was their coming and going through the cellars that made me bring
the children here, in fear of them."

"But where are the children?" he asked, for no sound had come from the
corner she had left.

"There are three, Monsieur, in the dark behind me. Two live, but t