it seemed to me a doomed thing, and I was sorry for it.
However, as I let him out into the road again, I pounded into myself
lots of things like "It hasn't happened yet"; "Sufficient unto the day";
and, "What isn't to be, won't be"; and found I was quite calm. Luckily
I did not have much time to myself, for I had hardly sat down quietly
when there was another tap at the door and I opened to find an officer
of the bicycle corps standing there.

"Captain Edwards's compliments," he said, "and will you be so kind as to
explain to me exactly where you think the Uhlans are hidden?"
I told him that if he would come down the road a little way with me I
would show him.

"Wait a moment," he said, holding the door. "You are not afraid?"
I told him that I was not.

"My orders are not to expose you uselessly. Wait there a minute."

He stepped back into the garden, gave a quick look overhead,--I don't
know what for, unless for a Taube. Then he said, "Now, you will please
come out into the road and keep close to the bank at the left, in the
shadow. I shall walk at the extreme right. As soon as I get where I
can see the roads ahead, at the foot of the hill, I shall ask you to
stop, and please stop at once. I don't want you to be seen from the
road below, in case any one is there. Do you understand ?"

I said I did. So we went into the road and walked silently down the
hill. Just before we got to the turn, he motioned me to stop and stood
with his map in hand while I explained that he was to cross the road
that led into Voisins, take the cart track down the hill past the
washhouse on his left, and turn into the wood road on that side. At each
indication he said, "I have it." When I had explained, he simply said,
"Rough road?"

I said it was, very, and wet in the dryest weather.

"Wooded all the way?" he asked.

I told him that it was, and, what was more, so winding that you could
not see ten feet ahead anywhere between here and Conde.

"Humph," he said. "Perfectly clear, thank you very much. Please wait
right there a moment."

He looked up the hill behind him, and made a gesture in the air with his
hand above his head. I turned to look up the hill also. I saw the
corporal at the gate repeat the gesture; then a big bicycle corps, four
abreast, guns on their backs, slid round the corner and came gliding
down the hill. There was not a sound, not the rattle of a chain or a
pedal.

"Thank you very much," said the