Then Lieutenant Fevrier, being French, took the General's hand and
kissed it, and the General, being French, felt his throat fill with
tears.

Fevrier left the headquarters, paraded his men, laid his sword and
revolver on the ground, and ordered his fifty to pile their arms. Then
he made them a speech--a very short speech, but it cost him much to
make it in an even voice.

"My braves," said he, "my fellow-soldiers, it is easy to fight for
one's country, it is not difficult to die for it. But the supreme test
of patriotism is willingly to suffer shame for it. That test your
country now claims of you. Attention! March!"

For the last time he exchanged a password with a French sentinel, and
tramped out into the belt of ground between the French outposts and
the Prussian field-watch. Now in this belt there stood a little
village which Fevrier had held with skill and honour all the two
days of the battle of Noisseville. Doubtless that recollection had
something to do with his choice of the village. For in his martyrdom
of shame he had fallen to wonder whether after all he had not deserved
it, and any reassurance such as the gaping house-walls of Vaudere
would bring to him, was eagerly welcomed. There was another reason,
however, in the position of the village.

It stood in an abrupt valley at the foot of a steep vine-hill on the
summit, and which was the Prussian forepost. The Prussian field-watch
would be even nearer to Vaudere and dispersed amongst the vines. So
he could get his ignominious work over quickly in the morning. The
village would provide, too, safe quarters for the night, since it
was well within range of the heavy guns in Fort St. Julien, and the
Prussians on that account were unable to hold it.

He led his fifty soldiers then northwestward from his camp, skirted
the Bois de Grimont, and marched into the village. The night was dark,
and the sky so overhung with clouds that not a star was visible. The
one street of Vaudere was absolutely silent. The glimmering white
cottages showed their black rents on either side, but never the light
of a candle behind any shutter. Lieutenant Fevrier left his men at the
western or Frenchward end of the street, and went forward alone.

The doors of the houses stood open. The path was encumbered with the
wreckage of their contents, and every now and then he smelt a whiff of
paraffin, as though lamps had been broken or cans overset. Vaudere had
been looted, but there wer