nsively down the corridors he
passed, or overshoulder for some nameless thing that stalked him and
was never there when he looked, but ever lurked impishly just beyond
the tail of his eye.

So that, when abruptly a man moved from behind a rock some thirty or
forty paces ahead, Duchemin stopped short, with jangled nerves and a
barely smothered exclamation. Possibly a shape of spectral terror would
have been less startling; in that weird place and hour humanity seemed
more incongruous than the supernatural. It was at once apparent that
the man had neither knowledge of nor concern with the stranger. For an
instant he stood with his back to the latter, peering intently down the
aisle which Duchemin had been following, a stout body filling out too
well the uniform of a private soldier in the American Expeditionary
Forces--that most ungainly, inutile, unbecoming costume that ever
graced the form of man.

Then he half turned, beckoned hastily to one invisible to the observer,
and furtively moved on. As furtively his signal was answered by a
fellow who wore the nondescript garments of a peasant. And as suddenly
as they had come into sight, the two slipped round a rocky shoulder,
and the street of monoliths was empty.

III

MEETING BY MOONLIGHT

Now granting that a soldier should be free to spend his leave where he
will, unchallenged, it remained true that the last of the A.E.F. had
long since said farewell to the shores of France, while the Tarn
country seemed a far cry from the banks of the Rhine, in those days
still under occupation by forces of the United States Regular Army.
Then, too, it was a fact within the knowledge of Monsieur Duchemin that
the uniform of the Americans had more than frequently been used by
those ancient acquaintances of his, the Apaches of Paris, as a cloak
for their own misdoings. So it didn't need the air of stealth that
marked this business to persuade him there was mischief in the brew.

But indeed he got in motion to investigate without stopping to debate
an excuse for so doing, and several seconds before he heard the woman's
cries.

Of these the first sounded, shrill with alarm, as Duchemin turned the
corner where the prowlers had gone from sight. But a high wall of rock
alone met his vision, and he broke into a run that carried him round
still another corner and then plumped him headlong into the theatre of
villainy.

This was open ground, a breadth of turf bordering on one of