"The last house on the left, as you go out from the farther end of the village. But anyone will show you it, in the morning.

"You don't want the light any longer?"

For the boys had, while speaking, been taking off their boots, and making a show of preparing to lie down on the straw.

"No, thank you. Good night.

"Oh, I forgot--what do you charge, a cask, for your best beer?

Father wanted to know and, if the price suits, will send down a cart to fetch it."

The landlord named the price, and then said good night, and left them.

When he returned to the room where he had left the German soldiers, the sergeant asked him a question or two concerning the boys; and the landlord repeated the substance of the conversation which he had just had. This allayed the last suspicions which had remained in the sergeant's mind; and he congratulated himself, greatly, that he had not taken his men out, in such a night, upon a mere groundless suspicion.

"If the landlord repeats that yarn to the Germans, it will allay all suspicion," Ralph said, when they were left alone. "Otherwise the sergeant might have taken it into his head to come to have a look at us and, although it would not very much matter that he should discover that the birds had flown, still it would have put him on his guard, and he might have doubled the sentries, and made it much more difficult for us.

"We have had a very narrow squeak for it this time, Percy, old boy."

"Very, Ralph! I would rather go through twenty battles, again, than feel as I felt when I saw you start, and thought that I should never see you again, alive."

"Well, we have no time to lose now, Percy. Have you got your boots on again? If so, let us start at once. The major and men must be very anxious, long before this. It must be full an hour since we came."

"It has been the longest hour I ever pa.s.sed, Ralph. There now, I am ready, if you are."

"We must go out very quietly, Percy. I have no doubt that they have got sentries posted all about. They know that we are in the neighborhood I wish I knew how many there are of them."

"I found out, from the landlord, that all the fifteen men we saw here were billeted upon him," Percy said. "He told me at first, when I asked him, that he could do nothing for me in the way of a bed, because there were three or four in every room. I said that a stable and a little straw would do for us, very well, and then he thought of this outhouse.

"At the same rate, there must be at least a hundred men in the village."

They now opened the door of the outhouse, went quietly out, and made their way through a garden at the back of the house towards the wood.

"Stand still a few minutes, Percy," Ralph said, in a whisper, "and let us see if we can find out where the sentries are placed. I expect that they form a cordon round the village.

"Lie down by this wall. We can see them, there, and they cannot see us."

It was well that they did so for, in another minute, they heard a tread quite close to them; and a Prussian soldier pa.s.sed, within a yard of where they were lying. They could dimly see that his hood was over his head, and hear that he was humming to himself a sc.r.a.p of some German air. They lay there until he had again pa.s.sed the spot; and then--having found out the direction of his beat--they crawled noiselessly away and, in five minutes, had reached the edge of the forest.

They did not enter it, as it would have been impossible--in the dense darkness--to have made their way without running against trees, and snapping off boughs, which would have given the alarm.

They therefore skirted the edge--knowing that, with the trees behind them, they would be invisible at the distance of a yard or two--and in ten minutes reached the place where their company was awaiting them. As they approached the spot, they gave a short, low whistle; which was the agreed sign, among the band, for knowing each other on night expeditions. It was answered at once and, in another minute, they were among their friends.

"What has happened?" Major Tempe asked. "We were getting very anxious about you. I sent Favarts to reconnoiter, ten minutes ago; and he has just returned, saying that he can hear someone pacing backwards and forwards on the road, and that he believes it to be a sentry."

"He was quite right," Ralph said; "the village is full of Germans.

There must--as far as we can see--be seventy or eighty of them, at the very lowest; and there are probably a hundred. We have been prisoners, or something very like it, and have had a monstrously close shave of it.

"But I will tell you all that, when we have time. Do you still think of carrying out your plans?"

"Certainly," Major Tempe said, "that schoolmaster I am determined to have, even if we fight our way in, and shoot him in bed. Have you found out where he lives?"

"No, sir, but we have found out where the priest lives. It is this end house: the end of the village, on the left-hand side as you come out."

"Are the sentries very close together?"

"They are pretty close, but not too close to prevent our crawling between them, un.o.bserved, on such a night as this."

Major Tempe hesitated for a while.

"It would be too hazardous," he said. "We know nothing of the ground over which we should have to crawl, and it would be hardly possible for thirty men--with our accouterments, and firearms--to crawl along without snapping sticks, or striking rifles against a stone and giving the alarm.

"No, the sentry at the entrance of the village must be silenced."

So saying, the commandant turned to the men who were standing round, and explained briefly the purport of the whispered conversation which he had had with Ralph. He then chose two active young men, and told them to take off their cloaks, belts, and accouterments of all kinds; and to leave them, with their rifles, with the men who were to remain at the spot at which they then were--to cover their retreat, if necessary. They were to take nothing with them but their sword bayonets--which were not to be used, except in case of necessity--and a coil of light rope.

Definite instructions were given them as to the manner in which their attack was to be made.

They then took off their boots, and set off noiselessly upon their enterprise. They went on rapidly, until they were within plain hearing of the footsteps of the sentinel; and then very cautiously and, crouching almost to the ground, so as not to bring their bodies on a level with his eye, they crept up foot by foot to the end of his beat. Here they waited a short time, while he pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed them, unthinking of the deadly foe who, had they stretched out their hands, could have touched his cloak as he went past them.

At last, the second time he pa.s.sed them on his way towards the village, they rose together behind him. In an instant one had garroted him--with a choking grip, that almost strangled him, and prevented him uttering the slightest sound--while the other grasped his rifle by the lock, so as to prevent the possibility of its being fired. In another instant, the rifle was torn from the grasp of the almost stupefied man; cords were pa.s.sed tightly round his arms and legs; a handkerchief was thrust into his mouth, and fastened there by a cord going across the mouth and tied behind the head and, before the bewildered man fairly knew what had happened, he was lying bound and gagged by the roadside.

One of the franc tireurs now ran back, to tell the commandant that the men could advance; while the other--selected specially because he understood a little German--put on the spiked helmet of the captured sentry, and began to walk up and down, in readiness to repeat the cry of "All well," should it be pa.s.sed round.

The whole company were now moved up. Ten men were left at the point where the sentry was posted, to cover a retreat; or to a.s.sist the sentry, in case of any party coming out to relieve guard, and so discovering the change which had taken place. The others, led by the commandant, proceeded forward until opposite the priest's house, in which lights were still burning; for it was not, as yet, ten o'clock.

Major Tempe, accompanied only by two men--and by Ralph Barclay, to interpret, if necessary--now went cautiously up to the house. The light was in a room on the ground floor. To this Major Tempe advanced and, looking in, saw the priest sitting reading, alone. He tapped very gently at the window; and the priest, looking up, gave a start upon seeing an armed man looking in at the window.

Major Tempe put his finger to his lips, to enforce the necessity for silence, and made signs to him to open the window. After a moment's hesitation the priest rose from his seat, came to the window, and unfastened it; taking great precautions against noise.

"Are you French?" he asked, in a whisper.

"Yes; a commandant of franc tireurs."

"Hush, then, for your life," the priest said, earnestly. "The village is full of Prussians. The officer, with a soldier as his servant, is upstairs. He arrived in a state of fever; and is, tonight, quite ill. The soldier is up with him. I believe the sergeant, who is at the inn, is in command for to-night. A soldier was dispatched, this evening, to ask for another officer to be sent out.

"What can I do for you?"

"I only want you to tell me in which house the schoolmaster lives.

He is a traitor, and has betrayed us to the Prussians. It is owing to him that they are here."

"He has a bad name, in the village," the priest said; "and we had applied to have him removed. He lives in the third house from here, on the same side of the road."

"Has he any Germans quartered upon him?"

"Twenty or thirty men," the priest said. "The schoolroom is full of them."

"Do you know which is his room?" Major Tempe asked. "It would be a great thing, if we could get at him without alarming the enemy. I have thirty men here, but I do not want to have a fight in the village, if I can help it."

"I know his house," the priest said. "The schoolroom is at the side of the house, and his sitting room and kitchen on the ground floor of the house itself. There are three bedrooms over. His room is in front of the house, to the right as you face it."