"I understand," he said in a low voice. "Thank you all for your warning. Yes, I will be here this evening."

So saying he turned and moved away, walking unsteadily as if he were drunk. The woman looked after him pityingly, and then, shaking her head and muttering execrations against the "Reds," she made her way home to tell Mere Pichon that she had fulfilled her mission.

Harry walked on slowly until some distance from the town, and then threw himself down on a bank by the road and lay for a time silent and despairing. At last tears came to his relief, and his broad shoulders shook with a passion of sobbing to think that just at the moment when a chance of escape was opened - just when all the dangers seemed nearly past - the girls should have fallen into the hands of the enemy, and he not there to strike a blow in their defence. To think of Jeanne - his bright, fearless Jeanne - and clinging little Virginie, in the hands of these human tigers. It was maddening! But after a time the passion of weeping calmed down, and Harry sat up suddenly.