ment.

Feraud was doing regimental work, but Lieut. D'Hubert had the good
fortune to be attached to the person of the general commanding the
division, as officier d'ordonnance. It was in Strasbourg, and in this
agreeable and important garrison they were enjoying greatly a short
interval of peace. They were enjoying it, though both intensely warlike,
because it was a sword-sharpening, firelock-cleaning peace, dear to a
military heart and undamaging to military prestige, inasmuch that no one
believed in its sincerity or duration.

Under those historical circumstances, so favourable to the proper
appreciation of military leisure, Lieut. D'Hubert, one fine afternoon,
made his way along a quiet street of a cheerful suburb towards Lieut.
Feraud's quarters, which were in a private house with a garden at the
back, belonging to an old maiden lady.

His knock at the door was answered instantly by a young maid in Alsatian
costume. Her fresh complexion and her long eyelashes, lowered demurely
at the sight of the tall officer, caused Lieut. D'Hubert, who was
accessible to esthetic impressions, to relax the cold, severe gravity of
his face. At the same time he observed that the girl had over her arm a
pair of hussar's breeches, blue with a red stripe.

"Lieut. Feraud in?" he inquired, benevolently.

"Oh, no, sir! He went out at six this morning."

The pretty maid tried to close the door. Lieut. D'Hubert, opposing this
move with gentle firmness, stepped into the ante-room, jingling his
spurs.

"Come, my dear! You don't mean to say he has not been home since six
o'clock this morning?"

Saying these words, Lieut. D'Hubert opened without ceremony the door
of a room so comfortably and neatly ordered that only from internal
evidence in the shape of boots, uniforms, and military accoutrements did
he acquire the conviction that it was Lieut. Feraud's room. And he saw
also that Lieut. Feraud was not at home. The truthful maid had followed
him, and raised her candid eyes to his face.

"H'm!" said Lieut. D'Hubert, greatly disappointed, for he had already
visited all the haunts where a lieutenant of hussars could be found of a
fine afternoon. "So he's out? And do you happen to know, my dear, why he
went out at six this morning?"

"No," she answered, readily. "He came home late last night, and snored.
I heard him when I got up at five. Then he dressed himself in his oldest
uniform and went out. Service, I suppose."

"Service? Not a