man General Staff, the rank and file, as they came south
from Creil and Nanteuil, believed themselves only a few hours from the
Boulevards, from the city of pleasure and spoil.

What had happened? The common cry of men so sharply foiled went up.
"Nous sommes trahis!" The German troops in Vareddes, foreseeing
immediate withdrawal, and surrounded by their own dead and dying, must
somehow avenge themselves, on some one. "Hostages! The village has
played us false! The Cure has been signalling from the church. We are in
a nest of spies!"

So on the evening of the 7th, the old Cure, who had spent his day in the
church, doing what he could for the wounded, and was worn out, had just
gone to bed when there was loud knocking at his door. He was dragged out
of bed, and told that he was charged with making signals to the French
Army from his church tower, and so causing the defeat of the Germans.

He pointed out that he was physically incapable of climbing the tower,
that any wounded German of whom the church was full could have seen him
doing it, had the absurd charge been true. He reminded them that he had
spent his whole time in nursing their men. No use! He is struck,
hustled, spat upon, and dragged off to the Mairie. There he passed the
night sitting on a hamper, and in the morning some one remembers to have
seen him there, his rosary in his hand.

In one of the local accounts there is a touching photograph, taken, of
course, before the war, of the Cure among the boys of the village. A
mild reserved face, with something of the child in it; the face of a man
who had had a gentle experience of life, and might surely hope for a
gentle death.

Altogether some fourteen hostages, all but two over sixty years of age,
and several over seventy, were taken during the evening and night. They
ask why. The answer is, "The Germans have been betrayed!" One man is
arrested because he had said to a German who was boasting that the
German Army would be in Paris in two days--"All right!--but you're not
there yet!" Another, because he had been seen going backwards and
forwards to a wood, in which it appeared he had hidden two horses whom
he had been trying to feed. One old man of seventy-nine could only walk
to the yard in which the others were gathered by the help of his wife's
arm. When they arrived there a soldier separated them so roughly that
the wife fell.

Imagine the horror of the September night!--the terror of the women who,
in