oked, and
then started back. He gave a cry and turned sickly white. On the table
lay _the little huddled form of Boudru_. The morning sun that had been
paling the candles in the sconces, struck the golden hair and staring
eyes, that had a few hours before, held all the spring-time; struck,
too, a heavy scarlet patch on the little overall, as the sergeant
tenderly turned the little body over....

"Oh! God of Mercy!... How horrible! A bayonet through his heart ..." he
muttered. The Hun's sleeve spotted with blood came back to his mind, and
filled him with blind, unreasoning rage.

"You swine," he said. "I'll----"

The man from Stettin suddenly felt his heart stop beating. He stood
petrified for a moment; then he clutched the table with one feverish
movement; and when he saw the pale cherub face, he became covered at
once with perspiration. Then the terror, which had paralyzed him a
second or so, gave way to the wild instinct of self-preservation. He hit
out wildly with both arms, kicking out at the same moment. In a second
he was out in the hall, and had locked the door behind him. A door
opened somewhere outside, and they heard him running down the garden.
Some of the men snatched their rifles, rushed to the window, and threw
it open. Four or five shots rang out simultaneously, and the stench of
cordite was wafted back on the sharp morning air as the man from Stettin
fell in a crumpled heap, his face buried in a clump of violets. The
sergeant went into the garden.

"Hum!" he remarked after an instant, "dead, did you say? He's as dead as
a doornail ... anyway, it's nothing to do with us! If ever a soul went
straight to hell," he muttered to himself, "it was that red devil's."

IV

THE STORY OF A SPY

Donald McNab, private (and distinguished ornament) of the London
Regiment, leaned his elbows on the little oak table in the bar of the
"Three Nuns," and eyed me with withering contempt. From a corner of the
settle I stared--with a wholly unsuccessful attempt to look
unconcerned--at a quaint old painting of Sergeant Broughton who first
taught Englishmen to box scientifically. When the great are really
wrathful it ill becomes pigmy people to jabber or argue. So I waited
with bent head and respectful silence to which the passing moods of such
an erratic genius are entitled.

When McNab and I had met an hour or so before we had been on the most
friendly terms. We had both ordered our pint of beer, filled our pip