dly, as if it were all real again, Julie and himself at the
little table by the window, and Antoine and Suzanne serving. He choked,
and for a little while he could not reply to Wharton's question:

"Why, Scott, what's struck you? You look as if you had lost your last
friend!"

"Wharton," replied John at last, "I found Mademoiselle Lannes and her
servants, Antoine and Suzanne Picard here, come as requested by letter,
to meet her brother Philip. I found them in the cathedral waiting, and
we went to the Hotel de l'Europe, where she and I dined together."

"Good Heavens! You don't mean to say she was there under the awful fire
of our guns?"

"No, else I should not have been with you. Weber, the trusty Alsatian,
of whom you know, came to us in the town. It was he who had borne the
letter from Philip to Mademoiselle Julie. We thought we saw Germans in
the outskirts of Chastel. We did not find any, but when we came back to
the Hotel de l'Europe, where we left them, Mademoiselle Julie and her
servants, the Picards, were gone."

"Perhaps they were alarmed by the German advance and have taken refuge
somewhere in the woods. If so, it will be easy to find them, Scott."

"No, they're not there. They're in the hands of the enemy. I shouldn't
mind it so much if she were merely a captive of the Germans, but that
man Auersperg has taken her again."

"How can you possibly know that to be true, Scott?"

Then John told the story of the register, and of the successive writing
of the names. Cotton heard him, too, and his face was very grave.

"It's a pity Bougainville couldn't have come earlier," he said. "We
might not only have saved Mademoiselle Julie but have captured this
Prince of Auersperg as well. Then we should indeed have had a prize. But
the wireless could not talk through all the storm and we had no warning
of the German movement until the snowfall died down."

"What are we going to do?" asked John.

"We'll stay on the site of Chastel at least until morning, which can't
be far away."

John looked at his watch.

"It will be daylight in two hours," he said.

"Oh, by the way," exclaimed Carstairs, "what became of Weber?"

"We were making our escape in Mademoiselle Lannes' automobile when we
ran into a detachment of Germans. Our car was riddled; we both dodged
for shelter and that was the last I saw of him."

"He escaped. I wager a pound to a shilling on it. The Alsatian not only
has borrowed the nine lives of a cat