iseless,
under the village bridge.

Only one man had left the village, and that was Brun, the
furtive-eyed young peasant, the sole representative in Saint-Lys
of the conscript class of 1871. And he would never have gone had
not a gendarme pulled him from under his mother's bed and hustled
him on to the first Paris-bound train, which happened to be a
cattle train, where Brun mingled his lamentations with the
bleating of sheep and the desolate bellow of thirsty cows.

Jack Marche heard of these things but saw little of them. The
great war wave rolling through the provinces towards the Rhine
skirted them at Saint-Lys, and scarcely disturbed them. They
heard that Douay was marching through the country somewhere, some
said towards Wissembourg, some said towards Saarbrueck. But these
towns were names to the peasants of Saint-Lys--tant pis for the
two towns! And General Douay--who was he? Probably a fat man in
red breeches and polished boots, wearing a cocked-hat and a cross
on his breast. Anyway, they would chase the Prussians and kill a
few, as they had chased the Russians in the Crimea, and the
Italians in Rome, and the Kabyles in Oran. The result? Nothing
but a few new colours for the ribbons in their sweethearts'
hair--like that pretty Magenta and Solferino and Sebastopol gray.
"Fichtre! Faut-il gaspiller tout de meme! mais, a la guerre comme
a la guerre!" which meant nothing in Saint-Lys.

It meant more to Jack Marche, riding one sultry afternoon through
the woods, idly drumming on his spurred boots with a battered
riding-crop.

It was his daily afternoon ride to the Chateau de Nesville; the
shy wood creatures were beginning to know him, even the younger
rabbits of the most recent generation sat up and mumbled their
prehensile lips, watching him with large, moist eyes. As for the
red squirrels in the chestnut-trees, and the dappled deer in the
carrefours, and the sulky boars that bristled at him from the
overgrown sentiers, they accepted him on condition that he kept
to the road. And he did, head bent, thoughtful eyes fixed on his
saddle-bow, drumming absently with his riding-crop on his spurred
boots, his bridle loose on his horse's neck.

There was little to break the monotony of the ride; a sudden gush
of song from a spotted thrush, the rustle of a pheasant in the
brake, perhaps the modest greeting of a rare keeper patrolling
his beat--nothing more. He went armed; he carried a long Colt's
six-shooter in his h