hmen here--French soldiers!' a giant of a captain
bawled at me. Beside him was a lieutenant even more tall. They had
swords in their hands, and they both pointed their weapons at me.

"'We have nineteen soldiers desperately wounded,' I said. 'There are no
other men here.'

"'You are lying!' shouted the captain. He thought he could frighten me
with his roar like a lion: but he did not seem to me so noble a beast.

"'You may come in and see for yourselves that I speak the truth,' I
said. And think what it was for me, a woman of Lorraine, to bid a
_German_ enter her house! I did not let those two pass by me into this
room. I came in first. While the lieutenant stood threatening our boys
in their beds that he would shoot if they moved, the captain went round,
tearing off the sheets, looking for firearms. In his hand was a strange
knife, like a dagger which he had worn in his belt. One of our soldiers,
too weak to open his lips, looked at the German, with a pair of great
dark eyes that spoke scorn; and that look maddened the man with a sudden
fury.

"'Coward, of a country of cowards! You and cattle like you have cut off
the ears and torn out the eyes of our glorious Bavarians. I'll slit your
throat to pay for that!'

"Ah, but this was too much--more than I could bear! I said 'No!' and I
put my two hands--so--between the throat of that boy and the German
knife."

When Soeur Julie came to this part of the tale, she made a beautiful,
unconscious gesture, re-enacting the part she had played. I knew then
how she had looked when she faced the Bavarian officer, and why he had
not hacked those two work-worn but nobly shaped hands of hers, to get at
the French chasseur's throat. She seemed the incarnate spirit of the
mother-woman, whose selfless courage no brute who had known a mother
could resist. And her "No!" rang out deep and clear as a warning tocsin.
I felt that the wounded boy must have been as safe behind those hands
and that "No!" as if a thick though transparent wall of glass had
magically risen to protect him.

"All this time," Soeur Julie went on, gathering herself together after
a moment. "All this time Germans led by non-commissioned officers were
searching the hospice. But they found no hiding soldiers, because there
were none such to find. And somehow that captain and his lieutenant did
not touch our wounded ones. They had a look of shame and sullenness on
their faces, as if they were angry with themselves for