e no Prussians now in the village.

He made sure of this by walking as far as the large house at the head
of the village. Then he went back to his men and led them forward
until he reached the general shop which every village has.

"It is not likely," he said, "that we shall find even the makeshift of
a supper. But courage, my friends, let us try!"

He could not have eaten a crust himself, but it had become an instinct
with him to anticipate the needs of his privates, and he acted from
habit. They crowded into the shop; one man shut the door, Fevrier
lighted a match and disclosed by its light staved-in barrels, empty
cannisters, broken boxes, fragments of lemonade bottles, but of food
not so much as a stale biscuit.

"Go upstairs and search."

They went and returned empty-handed.

"We have found nothing, monsieur," said they.

"But I have," replied Fevrier, and striking another match he held up
what he had found, dirty and crumpled, in a corner of the shop. It
was a little tricolour flag of painted linen upon a bamboo stick, a
child's cheap and gaudy toy. But Fevrier held it up solemnly, and of
the fifty deserters no one laughed.

"The flag of the Patrie," said Fevrier, and with one accord the
deserters uncovered.

The match burned down to Fevrier's fingers, he dropped it and trod
upon it and there was a moment's absolute stillness. Then in the
darkness a ringing voice leapt out.

"Vive la France!"

It was not the lieutenant's voice, but the voice of a peasant from the
south of the Loire, one of the deserters.

"Ah, but that is fine, that cry," said Fevrier.

He could have embraced that private on both cheeks. There was love in
that cry, pain as well--it could not be otherwise--but above all a
very passion of confidence.

"Again!" said Fevrier; and this time all his men took it up, shouting
it out, exultantly. The little ruined shop, in itself a contradiction
of the cry, rang out and clattered with the noise until it seemed to
Fevrier that it must surely pierce across the country into Metz and
pluck the Mareschal in his headquarters from his diffidence. But they
were only fifty deserters in a deserted village, lost in the darkness,
and more likely to be overheard by the Prussian sentries than by any
of their own blood.

It was Fevrier who first saw the danger of their ebullition. He cut it
short by ordering them to seek quarters where they could sleep until
daybreak. For himself, he thrust the little