h were succeeding one another too quickly
to suit me.

He gave me an absent-minded nod; a moment later the Countess entered.
She had mended her black crepe gown where I tore it when I hung in
the shadow of death under the battlements of La Trappe. She wore black
gloves, a trifle shabby, and carried a worn satchel in her hands.

Buckhurst aided me to rise, the Countess threw my hussar jacket over
my shoulders and buttoned it; I felt the touch of her cool, little
fingers on my hot, unshaved throat.

"I congratulate you on your convalescence," she said, in a low voice.
"Lean on me, monsieur."

My head swam; hips and knees were without strength; she aided me down
the stairway and out into the pale sunshine, where stood the same
mud-splashed, rusty vehicle which had brought us hither from La
Trappe.

The Countess had only a satchel and a valise; Buckhurst's luggage
comprised a long, flat, steel-bound box, a satchel, and a parcel. I
had nothing. My baggage, which I had left in Morsbronn, had without
doubt been confiscated long since; my field-glasses, sabre, and
revolver were gone; I had only what clothes I was wearing--a dirty,
ragged, gray-blue flannel shirt, my muddy jacket, scarlet
riding-breeches, and officer's boots. But in one of the hip-pockets of
my breeches I carried a fortune in diamonds.

As I stood beside the carriage, wondering how I was going to get in, I
felt an arm slip under my neck and another slide gently under my
knees, and Buckhurst lifted me. Beneath the loose, gray coat-sleeves
his bent arms were rigid as steel; his supple frame straightened; he
moved a step forward and laid me on the shabby cushions.

The Countess looked at me, turned and glanced up at her
smoke-blackened house, where a dozen Prussian soldiers leaned from the
lower windows smoking their long porcelain pipes and the provost
marshal stood in the doorway, helmeted, spurred, immaculate from
golden cheek-guard to the glittering tip of his silver scabbard. An
Uhlan, dismounted, stood on guard below the steps, his lance at a
"present," the black-and-white swallow-tailed pennon drooping from
the steel point.

The Countess bent her pretty head under its small black hat; the
provost's white-gloved hand flew to his helmet peak.

"Fear nothing, madame," he said, pompously. "Your house and its
contents are safe until you return. This village is now German soil."

The Countess looked at him steadily, gravely.

"I thank you, monsieur,