it must be death before capture. He
must not be taken alive."

"I understand, sir," said Marbeau, quietly.

"If you think Strasbourg too difficult, it is not too late to draw
back. It was, perhaps, unwise for me to select it."

"The more difficult it is, the more will it dismay the enemy," Marbeau
pointed out. "Let us try Strasbourg, at least. If we fail there, we can
try again somewhere else."

"Well, I agree. Remember, you are not to spare expense."

"We have had to purchase two houses in order to be quite secure."

"Purchase a dozen, if you need them. The date, you say--"

"Is one week from yesterday."

"And the hour?"

"The hour of noon."

Delcasse turned to the day on his desk calendar, and wrote a large "12"
upon it.

"Adieu, then, Marbeau," he said, and held out his hand. "My prayers go
with you!"

* * * * *

Fronting on the Zurichstrasse, some half mile from the arsenal at
Strasbourg, stands a great tobacco manufactory, covering two blocks and
employing a thousand people. These men and women and children live for
the most part in the crooked little streets of the neighbourhood, for
the hours of work are long, and to walk back and forth from a distance
not to be thought of. When a family has managed to scrape together a
little capital, more often than not the head of it opens a tiny shop,
while the younger members keep on working at the factory until the
business has established itself. Then the family takes a step upward in
social grade.

In a little room back of such a shop in the Hennenstrasse, on the
morning of a day late in October, three men sat down to breakfast. It
was a silent meal, for each of the three was preoccupied. They were
roughly dressed in the blouses and coarse trousers of labourers, and
their faces were covered with a week's stubble of beard. One was
white-haired, old, and seemingly very feeble; but the other two were in
the prime of life. At last the meal was finished, and the two younger
men pushed back their chairs and looked at each other; then they looked
at their companion, who, with vacant eyes, was staring at the opposite
wall so intently that the other two involuntarily glanced around at it.

"It is time for you to go, Lieutenant," said one of the men, in a low
voice. "Tell me again what you have to do, so that I may be sure there
is no mistake."

"What I have to do is this, General," said the other: "from here, I go
to the house w