n bullet in their children's throats or
the yellow flame amid their homesteads. Greater agony the world cannot
hold.

Under the porch of the cottage, by the sycamores, one group stood and
looked, silent and very still: Bernadou, erect, pale, calm, with a
fierce scorn burning in his eyes; Margot, quiet because he wished her
so, holding to her the rosy and golden beauty of her son; Reine Allix,
with a patient horror on her face, her figure drawn to its full height,
and her hands holding to her breast the crucifix. They stood thus,
waiting they knew not what, only resolute to show no cowardice and meet
no shame.

Behind them was the dull, waning glow of the wood fire on the hearth
which had been the centre of all their hopes and joys; before them the
dim, dark country, and the woe-stricken faces of their neighbours, and
the moving soldiery with their torches, and the quivering forms of the
half-dying horses.

Suddenly a voice arose from the armed mass: "Bring me the peasant
hither."

Bernadou was seized by several hands and forced and dragged from his
door out to the place where the leader of the uhlans sat on a white
charger that shook and snorted blood in its exhaustion. Bernadou cast
off the alien grasp that held him, and stood erect before his foes. He
was no longer pale, and his eyes were clear and steadfast.

"You look less a fool than the rest," said the Prussian commander. "You
know this country well?"

"Well!" The country in whose fields and woodlands he had wandered
from his infancy, and whose every meadow-path and wayside tree and
flower-sown brook he knew by heart as a lover knows the lines of his
mistress's face!

"You have arms here?" pursued the German.

"We had."

"What have you done with them?"

"If I had had my way, you would not need ask. You would have felt them."

The Prussian looked at him keenly, doing homage to the boldness of the
answer. "Will you confess where they are?"

"No."

"You know the penalty for concealment of arms is death?"

"You have made it so."

"We have, and Prussian will is French law. You are a bold man; you merit
death. But still, you know the country well?"

Bernadou smiled, as a mother might smile were any foolish enough to ask
her if she remembered the look her dead child's face had worn.

"If you know it well," pursued the Prussian, "I will give you a chance.
Lay hold of my stirrup-leather and be lashed to it, and show me straight
as the crow flies to