show
you where Armand used to hide so long ago when we play," she smiled
through her tears. "If zey come and find you----"

"I understand," said Tom. "They couldn't blame it to you."

"You see? Yess."

To Archer, who understood a few odds and ends of German old Pierre
managed to explain in that language his sorrow and humiliation at their
poor welcome.

All five then went into an old-fashioned kitchen with walls of naked
masonry and a great chimney, and from a cupboard Florette and her mother
filled a basket with such cold viands as were on hand. This, and a pail
of water the boys carried, and after another affectionate farewell from
Pierre and his wife, they followed the girl cautiously and silently out
into the darkness.

Tom Slade had already felt the fangs of the German beast and he did not
need any one to tell him that the loathsome thing was without conscience
or honor, but as he watched the slender form of Armand's young sister
hurrying on ahead of them and thought of all she had borne and must yet
bear and of the black fear that must be always in her young heart, his
sympathy for her and for this stricken home was very great.

He had not fully comprehended her meaning, but he understood that she
and her parents were haunted by an ever-present dread, and that even in
their apprehension it hurt them to skimp their hospitality or suffer any
shadow to be cast on a stranger's welcome.

Florette led the way along a narrow board path running back from the
house, through an endless maze of vine-covered arbor, which completely
roofed all the grounds adjacent to the house. Tom, accustomed only to
the small American grape arbor, was amazed at the extent of this
vineyard.

"Reminds you of an elevated railroad, don't it," said Archer.

On the rickety uprights (for the arbor like everything else on the old
place was going to ruin under the alien blight) large baskets hung here
and there. At intervals the structure sagged so that they had to stoop
to pass under it, and here and there it was broken or uncovered and they
caught glimpses of the sky.

They went over a little hillock and, still beneath the arbor, came upon
a place where the vines had fallen away from the ramshackle trellis and
formed a spreading mass upon the ground.

"You see?" whispered the girl in her pretty way. "Here Armand he climb.
Here he hide to drop ze grapes down my neck--so. Bad boy! So zen it
break--crash! He tumbled down. Ah--my pappa so