er with that singular alertness of movement which was one of his most
marked characteristics.

"Peace, wife!" he snapped. "Isn't that what we're all coming to? What
matter to Dupont now whether the potatoes were black or sound?"

Dalroy guessed that Dupont was the iron-monger of Vise. He was gaining a
glimpse, too, of the indomitable soul of Belgium. Though itching for
information, he checked the impulse, because time pressed horribly.

"Well," he said, "will you do what you can for the lady? The Germans
have spared you. You have fed them. They may treat you decently. I'll
make it worth while. I have plenty of money----"

Irene stood up. "Monsieur," she said, and her voice was sweet as the
song of a robin, "it is idle to speak of saving one without the other.
Where Monsieur Dalroy goes I go. If he dies, I die."

For the first time since entering the mill Dalroy dared to look at her.
In the sharp, crisp light of advancing day her blue eyes held a tint of
violet. Tear-drops glistened in the long lashes; but she smiled
wistfully, as though pleading for forgiveness.

"That is sheer nonsense," he cried in English, making a miserable
failure of the anger he tried to assume. "You ought to be reasonably
safe here. By insisting on remaining with me you deliberately sacrifice
both our lives. That is, I mean," he added hastily, aware of a slip,
"you prevent me too from taking the chance of escape that offers."

"If that were so I would not thrust myself on you," she answered. "But I
know the Germans. I know how they mean to wage war. They make no secret
of it. They intend to strike terror into every heart at the outset. They
are not men, but super-brutes. You saw Von Halwig at Berlin, and again
at Aix-la-Chapelle. If a titled Prussian can change his superficial
manners--not his nature, which remains invariably bestial--to that
extent in a day, before he has even the excuse of actual war, what will
the same man become when roused to fury by resistance? But we must not
talk English." She turned to Joos. "Tell us, then, monsieur," she said,
grave and serious as Pallas Athena questioning Perseus, "have not the
Prussians already ravaged and destroyed Vise?"

The old man's face suddenly lost its bronze, and became ivory white. His
features grew convulsed. He resembled one of those grotesque masks
carved by Japanese artists to simulate a demon. "Curse them!" he
shrilled. "Curse them in life and in death--man, woman, and child! Wha