together of
steel files.

From the line of defence, that included the first terrace of the Galland
grounds as the angle of a redoubt, not a shot, not a sound; silence on
the part of officers and men as profound as Mrs. Galland's slumber,
while one of the Browns' search-lights, like some great witch's
slow-turning eye in a narrow radius, covered the lower terraces and the
road.

Marta gave intermittent glances at the garden; the glances of a
guardian. She happened to be looking in that direction when figures
sprang across the road, crouching, running with the short, quick steps
of no body movement accompanying that of the legs. The search-light
caught them in merciless silhouette and the automatic and the rifles
from behind the sand-bags on the first terrace let go. Some of the
figures dropped and lay in the road and she knew that she had seen men
hit for the first time. Others, she thought, got safely to the cover of
the gutter on the garden side. Of those on the road, some were still and
some she saw were moving slowly back on their stomachs to safety. Now
the search-light laid its beam steadily on the road. Again silence. From
the upper terrace came a great voice, like that of the guns, from a
human throat:

"Why didn't we level those terraces? They'll creep up from one to the
other!" It was Stransky.

In answer was another voice--Dellarme's.

"Perhaps there wasn't time to do everything. And if this position is
taken before we are ready to go, it will not be from that side, but from
the side of the town."

"We're making them pay for seeing our garden, but, anyhow, we won't let
them pick any flowers," Stransky remarked pungently.

"If they get as far as the first terrace--well, in case of a crisis, we
have hand-grenades," Dellarme added in explanation. "But, God knows, I
hope we shall not have to use them."

After an interval, more figures made a rush across the road. They, too,
in Stransky's words, paid a price for seeing the garden. But the flashes
from the rifles and the automatic provided a target for a Gray battery.
The blue spark that flies from an overhead trolley or a third rail,
multiplied a hundredfold, broke in Marta's face. It was dazzling,
blinding as a bolt of lightning a few feet distant, with the thunder
crash at the same second, followed by the thrashing hum of bullets and
fragments against the side of the house.

"I knew that this must come!" something within her said. If she had not
bee