He
regarded the Hun with gravity for at least five minutes and then
delivered himself of his opinion.

"I don't like you," he said slowly, regarding the Hun, with his elfish
eyes. "I don't like you. I think you may be like the man in the English
soldiers' story, who turned into a pig--a baby killer perhaps. It is
because of your red hair that I think you may turn ..."

The man from Stettin who had been trying to drag a comb through his
horrible beard and hair, turned, and he looked like a big red devil, the
sun being on his head, and red beard and all.

"What's that?" he said, as he lurched ominously across the room. He had
swallowed the contents of a flask of Benedictine which he had taken from
his rucksack, and the repeated drinks were taking effect.

"I'll sweep the house, so there isn't a bug in a blanket left--you
damned brat!" He was bellowing like a bull, chewing his red beard and
muttering to himself. As he passed a table, he knocked the empty flask
on the floor. It did not break, and he viciously stamped his feet on it,
smashing it to pieces. He began to go mad from that moment. As he kicked
the wreckage about the room, his glance fell upon his rifle with the
fixed bayonet. And then the swine-dog ran amok. Boudru stood with his
back to the door: the blood froze in his veins, and his little body
stiffened into absolute rigidity.

"Turn into a pig!" shrieked the Hun. "What did you say? Turn into ..."

The bayonet flashed, and little Boudru--but what followed shall not be
printed. It would be passing the decent bounds of descriptive writing to
put it in black and white. It is sufficient to say that some minutes
later the Hun prised the floor-boards up with his bayonet, and Boudru,
from that moment, without warning, or leaving any trace, disappeared
from the world. He returned in the fullness of time. And this was the
way of it.

For the hundredth time that day, the Hun had gone into the bedroom to
look out of the bulgy bedroom window. Fear began to come over him
without any warning, and he was thinking of little Boudru down there in
the dark. The thing within him that served him for a heart was beating
queer rhythms ... the beating sounded like a regiment of British
Infantry on the march.

"Look," said he to the housewife, "look out on the road. Do you see
soldiers?"

The good woman, distraught between suspense and hope for her little one,
who had been missing for six long hours, blinked away a tear on