nd struck a blow at Jules which, if it had
taken effect, would most decidedly have damaged his personal appearance.

"Himmel! But not that!" shouted the stoutest of the constables.
"What! You would strike and damage a prisoner of ours who may be
valuable to the authorities! You would!"

In a moment he had gripped the scabbard of his sword, and, swinging it
round, dealt this malefactor a blow across the head which stretched him
on the pavement. Then, jostling their prisoners between them, hurrying
them on, and smiling triumphantly at the crowd still massed around
them, encouraging them almost to repeat the attempt of that young
fellow so drastically punished, and so to torture their prisoners, and
yet keeping the most valiant of these angry individuals at arm's
length, the two men of law dragged Jules and Henri swiftly onwards.

And at last the doors of the police station closed behind them, leaving
outside a great mass of men and women, of gutter-snipes, and of every
sort and class of individual--a mob which howled like hungry wolves as
the prisoners were lost to sight to them.

Inside that station Jules and Henri at once underwent a most thorough
and rigorous search.

"Ha! Tickets for England! Then you were bound for that country? And
letters from France, from Paris--suspicious!"

It was useless to point out to these police officials that it was
natural enough for two Frenchmen caught in Berlin at a time of
declaration of war between Germany and their own people to attempt to
reach some other place; and hopeless to draw their attention to the
fact that, being French, letters from France in their possession were
to be expected, while the contents alone could prove whether Jules and
Henri were of necessity suspects.

We need hardly follow the course of events after the capture of these
two unfortunate, if lively, young fellows. They were clapped into
prison as a natural course, into a dark, noisome cell, which would have
been but indifferent accommodation for some malefactor. They were
half-starved, bullied, browbeaten, and even beaten by their jailers,
they were threatened with death as spies--though there was not an atom
of evidence against them--and, finally, after many months of anguish,
of short commons, of brutal treatment, they found themselves interned
in Ruhleben race-course, to which so many unfortunate civilians were
sent, there to mope and fret and rot while the war was in progress.

"And he