last.

Bernadou, now that all means of defence was gone from him, and the only
thing left to him to deal with was his own life, had become quiet and
silent and passionless, as was his habit. He would have fought like a
mastiff for his home, but this they had forbidden him to do, and he was
passive and without hope. He shut to his door, and sat down with his
hand in that of Reine Allix and his arm around his wife. "There is
nothing to do but to wait," he said, sadly. The day seemed very long in
coming.

The firing ceased for a while; then its roll commenced afresh, and grew
nearer to the village. Then again all was still.

At noon a shepherd staggered into the place, pale, bleeding, bruised,
covered with mire. The Prussians, he told them, had forced him to
be their guide, had knotted him tight to a trooper's saddle, and had
dragged him with them until he was half dead with fatigue and pain. At
night he had broken from them and had fled. They were close at hand, he
said, and had burned the town from end to end because a man had fired at
them from a housetop. That was all he knew. Bernadou, who had gone out
to hear his news, returned into the house and sat down and hid his face
within his hands. "If I resist you are all lost," he muttered. "And yet
to yield like a cur!" It was a piteous question, whether to follow
the instinct in him and see his birthplace in flames and his family
slaughtered for his act, or to crush out the manhood in him and live,
loathing himself as a coward for evermore.

Reine Allix looked at him, and laid her hand on his bowed head, and her
voice was strong and tender as music: "Fret not thyself, my beloved.
When the moment comes, then do as thine own heart and the whisper of God
in it bid thee."

A great sob answered her; it was the first since his earliest infancy
that she had ever heard from Bernadou.

It grew dark. The autumn day died. The sullen clouds dropped scattered
rain. The red leaves were blown in millions by the wind. The little
houses on either side the road were dark, for the dwellers in them dared
not show any light that might be a star to allure to them the footsteps
of their foes. Bernadou sat with his arms on the table, and his head
resting on them. Margot nursed her son. Reine Allix prayed.

Suddenly in the street without there was the sound of many feet of
horses and of men, the shouting of angry voices, the splashing of quick
steps in the watery ways, the screams of wom