nking of it! The idea
of your taking risks, of your daring the police and the Germans--you who
oughtn't to know what the word danger means! I tell you I can't stand
it. Wasn't there some man to do it for you? Well, it's over now; and in
the future--See here, Miss Falconer, I can't wait any longer. There is
something I've got to say."

But I was not to say it yet, for, behold! just as my tongue was
loosened, I became aware of a most distinguished galaxy approaching us
round the lake. All save one of its members--Dunny, to be exact--were in
uniform; and the personage in the lead, walking between my guardian and
the duke of Raincy-la-Tour, was truly dazzling, being arrayed in a blue
coat and spectacularly red trousers and wearing as a finishing touch a
red cap freely braided with gold. Miss Falconer had risen.

"Why," she exclaimed, "it is General Le Cazeau!"

"Then confound General Le Cazeau!" was my inhospitably cry.

He was, I saw when he drew close, a person of stately dignity, as
indeed the hero who had saved Merlancourt and broken that last furious,
desperate, senseless onslaught of the Boches ought by rights to be.
Perhaps his splendor made me nervous. At any rate, my conscience smote
me. I remembered with sudden panic all my manifold transgressions,
beginning with the hour when I had chucked reason overboard and had
deliberately concealed a murdered man's body beneath a heap of straw.

"I believe," I gasped, "that this is an informal court martial. Nobody
could do the things I have done and be allowed to live. Still, I don't
see why they cured me if they were going to hang or shoot me."

I struggled up with the help of my crutches and stood waiting my doom.

The group had paused before us, and presentations followed, throughout
which the master of ceremonies was the Firefly of France. Then the
gray-headed general fixed me with a keen, stern gaze rather like an
eagle's.

"Your affair, Monsieur, has been of an irregularity," he said.

As with kaleidoscopic swiftness the details of my "affair" passed
through my memory, it was only by an effort that I restrained an
indecorous shout. He was correct. I could call to mind no single feature
that had been "regular," from the thief who was not a thief and had
flown out of my window like a conjurer, to the fight in Prezelay castle
where I had vanquished four husky Germans, mostly by the aid of a wooden
table, of all implements on earth.

"It is too true, _Monsieur