ompany," objected Jorance.

"Where a company passes, a regiment can pass and a brigade can
follow.... At Boersweilen, five miles from the Vosges, there are three
thousand German soldiers: on a war-footing, mark you. At Gernach, twelve
miles further, there are twelve thousand; and four thousand horses; and
eight hundred waggons. By the evening of the day on which war is
declared, perhaps even earlier, those fifteen thousand men will have
crossed the Col du Diable. It's not a surprise which they mean to
attempt: that wouldn't be worth their while. It is the absolute
crossing of the frontier, the taking possession of our ridges, the
occupation of Saint-Elophe. When our troops arrive, it will be too late!
They will find Noirmont cut off, Belfort threatened, the south of the
Vosges invaded.... You can picture the moral effect: we shall be done
for! That is what is being prepared in the dark. That is what you have
been unable to see, Jorance, in spite of all your watchfulness ... and
in spite of my warnings."

"I wrote to the prefect last week."

"You should have written last year! All this time, the other has been
coming on, the other has been advancing.... He hardly takes the trouble
to conceal himself.... There ... listen to him ... listen to him...."

In the far distance, like the sound of an echo, deadened by the mass of
trees, a bugle-call had rung out, somewhere, through the air. It was an
indistinct call, but Morestal was not mistaken and he hissed:

"Ah, it's he!... It's he.... I know the voice of Germany.... I know it
when I hear it ... the hoarse, the odious voice!..."

Presently, Philippe, who had not taken his eyes off his father, said:

"And then, father?"

"And then, my son, it was in anticipation of that day that I built my
house on this hill, that I surrounded my gardens with a wall, that,
unknown to anybody, I stocked the out-houses with means of defence:
ammunition, bags of sand, gun-powder ... that, in short, I prepared for
an alarm by setting up this unsuspected little fortress at twenty
minutes from the Col du Diable ... on the very threshold of the
frontier!"

He had planted himself with his face to the east, with his face to the
enemy; and, clutching his hips with his clenched hands, in an attitude
of defiance, he seemed to be awaiting the inevitable assault.

The special commissary, who still feared that his zeal had been caught
napping in this business, growled:

"Your shanty won't hold