Tyler nodded to Lucy with a last attempt at his persistent cheerfulness.
“Well, Miss,” he remarked, in such a sad ghost of his old chaffing tone that Lucy could hardly bear to listen, “I guess it’s a case of ‘Where do we go from here?’ all right, for us. On to Berlin’s the idea, I suppose. Hope the Kaiser don’t take a fancy to adopt me. Say,” he added, with a look of utter misery in his eyes, “who’d ’a’ thought, after twenty-five years I’ve spent in Arizona, that I’d end up in Germany?”
Lucy stammered out words of hope and encouragement which deceived him no more than they did herself. As she went on down the line, repeating the same useless efforts, Michelle ran up behind her and caught her sharply by the arm.
The French girl’s eyes were gleaming and two crimson spots burned in her pale cheeks. “Come with me, Lucy!” she commanded rather than asked. “The hard time will come when they leave Château-Plessis! There we must be to say farewell, for they go almost at once! I heard speak the German guard this moment.”
Only half understanding, Lucy allowed herself to be led out of the hall into the big ward. In the bustle and confusion no one noticed their departure. They went out by the side door into the garden and from here Michelle led the way across the square and eastward toward the edge of the town.
As they hurried along, half-running through the almost deserted streets, Michelle explained again her purpose.
“They must pass on the road that goes across the meadows, on their way from Château-Plessis,” she said, breathing fast. “It is there when they say adieu to the town that they will be triste! It is the last French town where they can set foot, for but two miles from here the train will take them into Germany.”
“Oh, Michelle, it’s too dreadful to bear!” cried Lucy, bitterly rebelling once more against the inevitable.
“It is not the first time that I have seen it,” said Michelle, her voice suddenly trembling. “Never before, though, have Americans gone, too.”
As they neared the meadows, making for the road that ran across them, north of the German observation post, the empty streets became filled with a steady line of people, hurrying eastward like themselves. Women, their faces half concealed by shawls, with children running beside them, shared the road with bent old men who found a cautious way among the débris of broken stone. Michelle’s was not the only loyal French heart to foresee the desolation of the prisoners on reaching the outskirts of Château-Plessis. One and all had learned the news somehow and had come out at any cost for a last farewell.