d already
melted much under the heat of the high sun. Three or four hundred feet
below a brook ran noisily over stones, but that was the only sound in
the mountains. He felt though that the Germans must be somewhere near.
Men with glasses might be watching him already.

He decided at once upon his role. In Europe peasants were often heavy
and loutish. It was expected of them, and none would be heavier or more
loutish than he. He thrust both hands in his pockets, and began to
whistle familiar German songs and hymns, varying them now and then with
a chanson or two that might have been sung for centuries in Lorraine.

The path led on across a little valley and then along the slope of
another ridge. Under the increasing heat of the sun the snow was now
melting much faster, and streams ran in every ravine. But the stalwart
young peasant, Jean Castel of Lorraine, was sure of his footing, and he
advanced steadily toward his goal.

Germans in rifle pits saw the figure coming their way, and several
officers examined it critically with their glasses. All pronounced the
stranger obviously a peasant, and they were equally sure that he could
do them no harm. He was coming straight toward their pits and so they
awaited him with some curiosity.

John presently caught the shimmer of sun on bayonets, and he knew now
that he would soon reach the German earthworks. His first care after
Delaunois left him, had been to destroy the passport that General
Vaugirard had given him and there was not a scratch of writing about him
to identify him as John Scott.

Whistling louder than ever, and looking vacant of countenance, he walked
boldly toward the first rifle pit, and, when the sharp hail of the
German sentry came, he promptly threw up his hands. An officer whom he
took to be a lieutenant and four or five men came toward him. All wore
heavy gray overcoats and they were really boys rather than men; not one
of them, including the officers, seeming to be more than twenty. But
they were large and muscular, heavily tanned by wind and snow and rain.

John had learned to read character, and as he walked carelessly toward
them he nevertheless watched them keenly. And so watching he judged that
they were honest youths, ready to like or hate, according to orders from
the men higher up, but by nature simple and direct. He did not feel any
fear of them.

"Halt!" said the officer, whom John judged to be a Saxon--he had seen
his kind in Dresden and