upon the open grand piano in the _salon_ a copy of
the _Hymn of Hate_, with a half-smoked cigarette beside it.

"The beasts!" exclaimed young Wetherby, hot with indignation. "Wouldn't
you like to turn our chaps loose in the Kaiser's palace at Potsdam,
Dashwood?"

"My dear chap," said Dennis, "they wouldn't touch a thing if you did.
It's only the Prussians who behave like this. Our fellows are gentlemen.
At the same time, I know what you mean, and it makes one sick."

They went rapidly from room to room, A Company having been entrusted
with the examination of the chateau, while Bob halted the rest of the
battalion in the grounds until they had satisfied themselves that the
house was empty.

Bob was making a tour of inspection round the high brick wall to
discover what possibilities there might exist of defending it in case of
attack, and he and one of the platoon commanders who accompanied him had
just reached the stabling, which was some distance from the house, when
a sudden hubbub came from the chateau itself.

"Hallo, they've found something," he said to his companion. And they ran
back; but before they could reach the terrace firing mingled with the
roar of voices, and above the rattle of Mausers rose the bark of a
machine-gun.

There were perhaps sixty or seventy men of A Company in the upper part
of the house when that hubbub arose; and, rushing out on to the gallery
that surrounded the entrance hall, Dennis and Wetherby found the floor
beneath them swarming with German infantry in the act of running a
couple of machine-guns forward from the huge fireplace.

They belonged to the same battalion which had so mysteriously
disappeared, and it was obvious that in their subterranean excavations
the Germans must have come upon a secret passage, old as the chateau
itself, and connected it up with their new works.

The back of the fireplace opened and revealed a black cavity, which
vomited a never-ending horde in the wake of the machine-guns, one of
which was slued round to command the garden, while the other was placed
at an open window, and was the first to fire.

"This is going to be very hot stuff!" shouted Dennis above the deafening
din, as the men of A Company came running on to the gallery. "Be
steady, lads, and let 'em have it."

They lined up at the gilded balustrade, and fired down into the mob
below them. A sea of upturned faces was turned to the gallery, and a
stout Prussian officer, who took very g