were everywhere, at Dijon and at Dieppe, at Vierzon as well as at Mans.  And almost every morning came the intelligence of some fortified place that had capitulated, unable longer to hold out under the bombardment.  Strasbourg had succumbed as early as the 28th of September, after standing forty-six days of siege and thirty-seven of shelling, her walls razed and her buildings riddled by more than two hundred thousand projectiles.  The citadel of Laon had been blown into the air; Toul had surrendered; and following them, a melancholy catalogue, came Soissons with its hundred and twenty-eight pieces of artillery, Verdun, which numbered a hundred and thirty-six, Neufbrisach with a hundred, La Fere with seventy, Montmedy, sixty-five.  Thionville was in flames, Phalsbourg had only opened her gates after a desperate resistance that lasted eighty days.  It seemed as if all France were doomed to burn and be reduced to ruins by the never-ceasing cannonade.

One morning that Jean manifested a fixed determination to be gone, Henriette seized both his hands and held them tight clasped in hers.

“Ah, no!  I beg you, do not go and leave me here alone.  You are not strong enough; wait a few days yet, only a few days.  I will let you go, I promise you I will, whenever the doctor says you are well enough to go and fight.”

V.

The cold was intense on that December evening.  Silvine and Prosper, together with little Charlot, were alone in the great kitchen of the farmhouse, she busy with her sewing, he whittling away at a whip that he proposed should be more than usually ornate.  It was seven o’clock; they had dined at six, not waiting for Father Fouchard, who they supposed had been detained at Raucourt, where there was a scarcity of meat, and Henriette, whose turn it was to watch that night at the hospital, had just left the house, after cautioning Silvine to be sure to replenish Jean’s stove with coal before she went to bed.

Outside a sky of inky blackness overhung the white expanse of snow.  No sound came from the village, buried among the drifts; all that was to be heard in the kitchen was the scraping of Prosper’s knife as he fashioned elaborate rosettes and lozenges on the dogwood stock.  Now and then he stopped and cast a glance at Charlot, whose flaxen head was nodding drowsily.  When the child fell asleep at last the silence seemed more profound than ever.  The mother noiselessly changed the position of the candle that the light might not strike the eyes of her little one; then sitting down to her sewing again, she sank into a deep reverie.  And Prosper, after a further period of hesitation, finally mustered up courage to disburden himself of what he wished to say.

“Listen, Silvine; I have something to tell you.  I have been watching for an opportunity to speak to you in private—­”

Alarmed by his preface, she raised her eyes and looked him in the face.

“This is what it is.  You’ll forgive me for frightening you, but it is best you should be forewarned.  In Remilly this morning, at the corner by the church, I saw Goliah; I saw him as plain as I see you sitting there.  Oh, no! there can be no mistake; I was not dreaming!”