e, I'll put a hole in the first man
that touches that door!"

The prospect looked favorable for a row. Oaths and imprecations
resounded, and one of the men was heard to shout that they would settle
matters with the pig of a peasant, who was like all the rest of them
and would throw his bread in the river rather than give a mouthful to a
starving soldier. The light of the candle glinted on the barrels of the
chassepots as they were brought to an aim; the angry men were about to
shoot him where he stood, while he, headstrong and violent, would not
yield an inch.

"Nothing, nothing! Not a crust! I tell you they cleaned me out!"

Maurice rushed in in affright, followed by Jean.

"Comrades, comrades--"

He knocked up the soldiers' guns, and raising his eyes, said
entreatingly:

"Come, be reasonable. Don't you know me? It is I."

"Who, I?"

"Maurice Levasseur, your nephew."

Father Fouchard took up his candle. He recognized his nephew, beyond
a doubt, but was firm in his resolve not to give so much as a glass of
water.

"How can I tell whether you are my nephew or not in this infernal
darkness? Clear out, everyone of you, or I will fire!"

And amid an uproar of execration, and threats to bring him down and burn
the shanty, he still had nothing to say but: "Clear out, or I'll fire!"
which he repeated more than twenty times.

Suddenly a loud clear voice was heard rising above the din:

"But not on me, father?"

The others stood aside, and in the flickering light of the candle a
man appeared, wearing the chevrons of a quartermaster-sergeant. It was
Honore, whose battery was a short two hundred yards from there and
who had been struggling for the last two hours against an irresistible
longing to come and knock at that door. He had sworn never to set foot
in that house again, and in all his four years of army life had not
exchanged a single letter with that father whom he now addressed so
curtly. The marauders had drawn apart and were conversing excitedly
among themselves; what, the old man's son, and a "non-com."! it wouldn't
answer; better go and try their luck elsewhere! So they slunk away and
vanished in the darkness.

When Fouchard saw that he had nothing more to fear he said in a
matter-of-course way, as if he had seen his son only the day before:

"It's you--All right, I'll come down."

His descent was a matter of time. He could be heard inside the house
opening locked doors and carefully fastening th