from the lawns before the great housed serene white front. "The women see?"

But Jovannic had already seen the pair, arms joined, who paced upon the side-lawn near at hand and had now stopped to look towards them. It was the old Contessa, who owned the house and still occupied a part of it, and the Contessina, her daughter. He knew the former as a disconcerting and never disconcerted specter of an aged lady, with lips that trembled and eyes that never faltered, and the latter as a serious, silent, tall girl with the black hair and oval Madonna face of her country and he knew her, too, as a vague and aching disturbance in his mind, a presence that troubled his leisure.

"You make your war here as sadly as a funeral," said Captain Hahn. "A fresh and joyous war—that's what it ought to be! Now, in Flanders, we'd have had that girl in with us at the mess." He laughed his rich, throaty laugh that seemed to lay a smear of himself over the subject of his mirth. "That at the very least!" he added.

Jovannic could only babble protestingly. "She she" he began in a flustered indignation. Captain Hahn laughed again. He had the advantage of the single mind over the mind divided against itself.

At the stables the sergeant of the guard received the prisoner. The redness of the sunset that dyed the world was over and about the scene. The sergeant, turning out upon the summons of the sentry, showed himself as an old Hungarian of the regular army, hairy as a Skye terrier, with the jovial blackguard air of his kind. He turned slow, estimating eyes on the bound prisoner.

"What is it?" he inquired.

"Deserter that's what it is," replied Captain Hahn sharply; he found the Austrian soldiers insufficiently respectful. "Lock him up safely, you understand. He'll go before the military tribunal to-morrow. Jovannic, just see to signing the papers and all that, will you?"

"At your orders, Herr Hauptmann," deferred Jovannic formally.

"Right," said Captain Hahn. "See you later, then." He swung off towards the front of the great mansion. Jovannic turned to his business of consigning the prisoner to safe keeping.

"You can untie his hands now," he said to the men of the escort as the sergeant moved away to fetch the committal book. The sergeant turned at his words.

"Plenty of time for that," he said in his hoarse and too familiar tones. "It's me that's responsible for him, isn't it? Well, then, let them stay tied up till I've had a look at him. I know these fellows I do."

"He can't get away from here," began Jovannic impatiently; but the old sergeant lifted a vast gnarled hand and wagged it at him with a kind of elderly rebuke.

"They're getting away in dozens every day," he rumbled. He put his hands on the silent man and turned him where he stood to face the light. "Yes," he said; "you've been knocking him about, too!"

The man had spoken no word; he showed now to the flush of the evening a face young and strongly molded, from which all passion, all force, seemed to have been drawn in and absorbed. It was calm as the face of a sleeper is calm; only the mark of Captain Hahn's blow, the great swollen bruise on the brow, touched it with a memory of violence. His eyes traveled beyond Jovannic and paused, looking. Upon the pebble path beside the screen of yews a foot sounded; Jovannic turned.

It was the Contessina; she came hurrying towards them. Jovannic saluted. Only two or three times had he stood as close to her as then; and never before had he seen her swift in movement, or anything but grave and measured in gait, gesture and speech. He stared in surprise at her tall slenderness as it stood in relief against the rose and bronze of the west.

"It is" she was a little breathless. "It is yes! young Luigi!" The prisoner, silent till then, stirred and made some little noise of acquiescence. Behind him, still holding to the cord that bound his wrists, his two stolid guards stared uncomprehendingly; the old sergeant, his face one wrinkled mass of bland knowingness, stood with his thumbs in his belt and his short, fat legs astraddle. She leaned forward she seemed to sway like a wind-blown stalk and stared at the prisoner's quiet face. Jovannic saw her lips part in a movement of pain. Then her face came round to him.

"You, oh!" she gasped at him. "You haven't, you didn't strike him?"

Jovannic stared at her. He understood nothing. Granted that she knew the man, as no doubt she knew every peasant of the village, he still didn't understand the touch of agony in her manner and her voice.

"No, signorina," he answered stiffly. "I have not touched him. In fact, I was ordering him to be unbound."

But Her eyes traveled again to the prisoner's bruised and defaced brow; she was breathing quickly, like a runner. "Who, then? Who has?"

The old sergeant wagged his disreputable head. "German handwriting, that is, my young lady," he croaked. "That's how our German lords and masters curse them! write their Gott mit uns! The noble Captain Hahn I knew as soon as I saw it!"

"Shut up, you!" ordered Jovannic, with the parade-snarl in his voice.
"And now, untie that man!"

He flung out a peremptory hand; in the girl's presence he meant to have an end of the sergeant's easy manners. But now it was she who astonished him by intervening.

"No!" she cried. "No!"

She moved a swift step nearer to the bound man, her arms half outspread as though she would guard him from them; her face, with its luminous, soft pallor, was suddenly desperate and strange.

"No!" she cried again. "You mustn't, you mustn't untie him now! You, you don't know. Oh, wait while I speak to him! Luigi!" She turned to the prisoner and began to speak with a quick, low urgency; her face, importunate and fearful, was close to the still mask of his. "Luigi, promise me! If I let them, if they untie your hands, will you promise not to, not to do it? Luigi will you?"

Jovannic could only stare at them, bewildered. He heard her pleading "Will you? Will you promise me, Luigi?" passionately, as though she would woo him to compliance. The peasant answered nothing; his slow eyes rested with a sort of heavy meditation on the eagerness of her face. They seemed to be alone in the midst of the soldiers, like men among statues. Then, beyond them, he caught sight of the old sergeant, watching with a kind of critical sympathy; he, at any rate, understood it all.

But Jovannic began in uncertain protest. None heeded him. The prisoner sighed and moved a shoulder in a half-shrug as of deprecation. "No, signorina," he said at last.

"Oh!" The sound was like a wail. The girl swayed back from him.

The sergeant clapped the man on the shoulder. "Be a good lad now!" he said. "Promise the young lady you'll behave and we'll have the cords off as quick as we can cut them. Promise her, such a nice young lady and all!"

The prisoner shook his head wearily. The girl, watching him, shivered.

"All this" Jovannic roused himself. "I don't understand. What's going on here? Sergeant, what's it all about?"

The old man made a grimace. "She knows," he said, with a nod towards the girl. "That proves it's spreading. It's got so now that if you only clout one of 'em on the side of the head he'll go out and kill himself. Won't let you so much as touch 'em!"

"What!" Jovannic gaped at him. "Kill themselves? You mean if his hands are untied, that man will?"

"Him?" The sergeant snorted. "Tonight if he can; tomorrow if he can't. He's dead, he is. I know 'em, Herr Leutnant. Dozens of 'em