opened a
fat leather wallet and placed upon the table under the General's
predatory nose a large pile of blue documents, some (but not all)
stamped with the violet stamp of the German A.Q.M.G. "If the
_hochgeehrter_ General will count them," said the _maire_, "he will see
they come to 325,000 francs. It is rather more than the fine," he
explained, "but I have made allowance for the fact that they are not
immediately redeemable. They are mostly stamped, and--_they are as good
as gold_."

For three minutes there was absolute silence in the room. The gilt clock
in its glass sepulchre on the mantelpiece ticked off the seconds as
loudly as a cricket on the hearth in the stillness of the night. The
_maire_ speculated with more curiosity than fear as to how many more of
these seconds he had to live. Never had the intervals seemed so long nor
their registration so insistent. The ashes fell with a soft susurrus in
the grate. The Commandant looked at the _maire_; the _maire_ looked at
the Commandant. Then the Commandant smiled. It was an inscrutable smile;
a smile in which the eyes participated not at all. There was merely a
muscular relaxation of the lips disclosing the teeth; to the _maire_
there seemed something almost canine in it. At last the General spoke.
"Gut!" he said gutturally; "you may go."

* * * * *

"You astonish me," I said to the _maire_, as he concluded his narrative.
We were sitting in his parlour, smoking a cigar together one day in
February in a town not a thousand miles from the German lines. "You
know, Monsieur le Maire, they have shot many a municipal magistrate for
less. I wonder they didn't make up their minds to shoot you." The
_maire_ smiled. "They did," he said quietly. He carefully nicked the ash
off his cigar, as he laid it down upon his desk, and opened the drawer
of his escritoire. He took out a piece of paper and handed it to me. It
was an order in German to shoot the _maire_ on the evacuation of the
town.

"You see, monsieur," he exclaimed, "your brave soldiers were a little
too quick for them. You made a surprise attack in force early one
morning and drove the enemy out. So surprising was it that the Staff
officers billeted in my house left a box half full of cigars on my
sideboard! You are smoking one of them now--a very good cigar, is it
not?" It was. "And they left a good many official papers behind--what
you call 'chits,' is it not?--and this one among t