garrison of the peril that awaited them, for it was plain that the
Germans were planning to lay in wait for the Frenchmen when they came
to the village on the following morning.

"Soon German soldiers began entering the houses, one soldier to each
house, in which he took his station, cowering the occupants by
terrible threats.

"Little Mathilde, when she heard the soldier assigned to their home
bang on the door with the butt of his rifle, fled to the kitchen,
where she stood listening and watching. She nearly cried out when the
soldier thrust the bayonet of his rifle at her father, and all the
resentment of her race at such injustice rose up within her.

"'I shall save them,' she breathed.

"Mathilde slipped out through the kitchen door into the walled garden,
and, climbing the wall, peered over. She could see German horsemen and
German infantrymen everywhere, the moonlight flashing on their helmets
and rifles as they moved rapidly about. How she should be able to get
over the wall without discovery she did not know. A heavy black cloud
at this moment drifted across the sky, hiding the face of the moon for
a few moments, and when the cloud had passed Mathilde was no longer on
the garden wall. She lay prone on the ground in a field on the
opposite side of the wall. Horsemen were all about her. Now and then a
horse narrowly missed stepping on her, and those Uhlans must have
wondered that night why their horses were so skittish.

"Every time she saw an opening the little heroine would dart ahead;
each time a cloud passed between earth and moon she gained a little
distance. Once a Uhlan's horse jumped clear over her and kicked
viciously at her after it had landed on its feet. You see, the grass
in the fields was high, there being no men to cut it. Had it not been
for the grass, Mathilde never could have accomplished what she did.

"At last she was clear of them, and then how she did run; she fairly
flew up the hill, stopping only when a French sentry halted her to
demand what she wanted.

"'I would speak with your captain,' panted Mathilde.

"The sentry laughed.

"'Think you my captain sits awake all night that he may receive calls
from the villagers?' he demanded.

"'But,' begged the girl, 'the Uhlans have come. They are even now in
the houses that they may come out and shoot you down when you go to
the village tomorrow.'

"'You are dreaming, my pretty miss. Go back to your sleep. It is a
nightmare you are t