g the great group of towers whose inverted
images were repeated in the glassy green of the moats. He felt eager to
see at once the stables with their herds of animals; then a brief glance
showed him that the stalls were comparatively empty. Mobilization had
carried off his best work horses; the driving and riding horses also had
disappeared. Those in charge of the grounds and the various stable
boys were also in the army. The Warden, a man upwards of fifty and
consumptive, was the only one of the personnel left at the castle. With
his wife and daughter he was keeping the mangers filled, and from time
to time was milking the neglected cows.

Within the noble edifice he again congratulated himself on the
adamantine will which had brought him thither. How could he ever give
up such riches! . . . He gloated over the paintings, the crystals, the
draperies, all bathed in gold by the splendor of the dying day, and he
felt more than proud to be their possessor. This pride awakened in him
an absurd, impossible courage, as though he were a gigantic being from
another planet, and all humanity merely an ant hill that he could grind
under foot. Just let the enemy come! He could hold his own against the
whole lot! . . . Then, when his common sense brought him out of his
heroic delirium, he tried to calm himself with an equally illogical
optimism. They would not come. He did not know why it was, but his heart
told him that they would not get that far.

He passed the following morning reconnoitering the artificial meadows
that he had made behind the park, lamenting their neglected condition
due to the departure of the men, trying himself to open the sluice gates
so as to give some water to the pasture lands which were beginning to
dry up. The grape vines were extending their branches the length of
their supports, and the full bunches, nearly ripe, were beginning to
show their triangular lusciousness among the leaves. Ay, who would
gather this abundant fruit! . . .

By afternoon he noted an extraordinary amount of movement in the
village. Georgette, the Warden's daughter, brought the news that many
enormous automobiles and soldiers, French soldiers, were beginning
to pass through the main street. In a little while a procession began
filing past on the high road near the castle, leading to the bridge
over the Marne. This was composed of motor trucks, open and closed, that
still had their old commercial signs under their covering of dus