im of
her--the upraising of her eyes or an unstudied gesture.

He sighed.

"You are very wonderful, you Americans," he said. It was the nearest to
a compliment that he had ever come. And after that evening he was always
very gentle with her. Once he had protected her because Henri had asked
him to do so; now he himself became in his silent way her protector.

The ride home through the dark was very quiet. Sara Lee sat beside him
watching the stars and growing increasingly anxious as they went, not
too rapidly, toward the little house. There were no lights. Air raids
had grown common in Dunkirk, and there were no street lights in the
little city. Once on the highway Jean lighted the lamps, but left them
very low, and two miles from the little house he put them out altogether.
They traveled by starlight then, following as best they could the tall
trees that marked the road. Now and then they went astray at that, and
once they tilted into the ditch and had hard pulling to get out.

At the top of the street Jean stopped and went on foot a little way down.
He came back, with the report that new shells had made the way impassable;
and again Sara Lee shivered. If the little house was gone!

But it was there, and lighted too. Through its broken shutters came the
yellow glow of the oil lamp that now hung over the table in the _salle a
manger_.

Whatever Jean's anxieties had been fell from him as he pushed open the
door. Henri's voice was the first thing they heard. He was too much
occupied to notice their approach.

So it was that Sara Lee saw, for the last time, the miller and his son,
Maurice; saw them, but did not know them, for over their heads were bags
of their own sacking, with eyeholes roughly cut in them. Their hands
were bound, and three soldiers were waiting to take them away.

"I have covered your heads," Henri was saying in French, "because it is
not well that our brave Belgians should know that they have been betrayed
by those of their own number."

It was a cold and terrible Henri who spoke.

"Take them away," he said to the waiting men.

A few moments later he turned from the door and heard Sara Lee sobbing
in her room. He tapped, and on receiving no reply he went in. The room
was unharmed, and by the light of a candle he saw the girl, face down on
the bed. He spoke to her, but she only lay crouched deeper, her
shoulders shaking.

"It is war, mademoiselle," he said, and went closer. Then suddenly al