boots squeaking in the soft, wet clay.
They knew where they were going, and why, and the thought upheld them,
for they were bitter at the loss of their comrades. It was a cavalry
job, they knew, but the cavalry were all on with the advance, and,
besides, it was more fitting that the regiment should avenge its own
dead men.

It was nearly eight when they left Les Andelys. At half-past eleven
their guide stopped at a place where two high pillars, crowned with some
heraldic stonework, flanked a huge iron gate. The wall in which it had
been the opening had crumbled away, but the great gate still towered
above the brambles and weeds which had overgrown its base. The
Prussians made their way round it and advanced stealthily, under the
shadow of a tunnel of oak branches, up the long avenue, which was still
cumbered by the leaves of last autumn. At the top they halted and
reconnoitred.

The black chateau lay in front of them. The moon had shone out between
two rain-clouds, and threw the old house into silver and shadow. It was
shaped like an L, with a low arched door in front, and lines of small
windows like the open ports of a man-of-war. Above was a dark roof,
breaking at the corners into little round overhanging turrets, the whole
lying silent in the moonshine, with a drift of ragged clouds blackening
the heavens behind it. A single light gleamed in one of the lower
windows.

The captain whispered his orders to his men. Some were to creep to the
front door, some to the back. Some were to watch the east, and some the
west. He and the sergeant stole on tiptoe to the lighted window.

It was a small room into which they looked, very meanly furnished.
An elderly man, in the dress of a menial, was reading a tattered paper
by the light of a guttering candle. He leaned back in his wooden chair
with his feet upon a box, while a bottle of white wine stood with a
half-filled tumbler upon a stool beside him. The sergeant thrust his
needle-gun through the glass, and the man sprang to his feet with a
shriek.

"Silence, for your life! The house is surrounded, and you cannot
escape. Come round and open the door, or we will show you no mercy when
we come in."

"For God's sake, don't shoot! I will open it! I will open it!"
He rushed from the room with his paper still crumpled up in his hand.
An instant later, with a groaning of old locks and a rasping of bars,
the low door swung open, and the Prussians poured into th