Sometime after dusk that evening the ammunition train moved out.  At a point a mile or so from the village a dispatch rider on a motor cycle stopped the rumbling lorry at the head of the procession and delivered a message, which the guide read by the light of a sheltered match.  The train moved on, but it did not turn down to the village.  It went beyond to a place of safety, and there remained for the night.

But before that time Henri, lying close in a field, had seen a skulking figure run from the road to the mill, and soon after had seen the mill wheel turn once, describing a great arc; and on one of the wings, showing only toward the poplar trees, was a lighted lantern.

Five minutes later, exactly time enough for the train to have reached the village street, German shells began to fall in it.  Henri, lying flat on the ground, swore silently and deeply.

In every land during this war there have been those who would sell their country for a price.  Sometimes money.  Sometimes protection.  And of all betrayals that of the man who sells his own country is the most dastardly.  Henri, lying face down, bit the grass beneath him in sheer rage.

One thing he had not counted on, he who foresaw most things.  The miller and his son, being what they were, were cowards as well.  Doubtless the mill had been promised protection.  It was too valuable to the Germans to be destroyed.  But with the first shot both men left the house by the mill and scurried like rabbits for the open fields.

Maurice, poor Marie’s lover by now, almost trampled on Henri’s prostrate body.  And Henri was alone, and his work was to take them alive.  They had information he must have—­how the modus vivendi had been arranged, through what channels.  And under suitable treatment they would tell.

He could not follow them through the fields.  He lay still, during a fiercer bombardment than the one before, raising his head now and then to see if the little house of mercy still stood.  No shells came his way, but the sky line of the village altered quickly.  The standing fragment of the church towers went early.  There was much sound of falling masonry.  From somewhere behind him a Belgian battery gave tongue, but not for long.  And then came silence.

Henri moved then.  He crept nearer the mill and nearer.  And at last he stood inside and took his bearings.  A lamp burned in the kitchen, showing a dirty brick floor and a littered table—­such a house as men keep, untidy and unhomelike.  A burnt kettle stood on the hearth, and leaning against the wall was the bag of grain Maurice had carried from the crossroads.

“A mill which grinds without grain,” Henri said to himself.

There was a boxed-in staircase to the upper floor, and there, with the door slightly ajar, he stationed himself, pistol in hand.  Now and then he glanced uneasily at the clock.  Sara Lee must not be back before he had taken his prisoners to the little house and turned them over to those who waited there.