No one was to be seen. But between three and four in the morning the first faint champing of marching feet could be heard and the Hun came down from the bedroom looking as pale as death. He opened the door and stood there listening. The insolent crunch, crunch, crunch of heavy nail-studded service boots came nearer, and a khaki column appeared on the winding road. The housewife, whose aching eyes had searched the road for Boudru all day, saw them too.
"Look," she cried, "look! The English soldiers are coming. Do you see?"
The man from Stettin rushed up to the bedroom, and jumped into the oak chest.
"Not tell the English! Not tell!"
Fifteen or twenty soldiers were to be heard grounding rifles and throwing off their equipment in front of the house.
Entered here Sergeant Stansfield, and shouted gaily to the housewife, but the moment he looked into her pale and worn face he understood that some sorrow had befallen her. Before he could hold her she had slid silently down on the floor, at his feet, and covered her face. "Ah,—ah,—ah! O God, help and pity me! They have taken my little son," she cried.
At this moment a soldier rushed in at the door. "I think there is a man who looks like a Boche trying to get out of the bedroom window!" he said. "Will you come, Sergeant? Quick!"
The sergeant went quickly, and returned with some men with fixed bayonets and led them up to the bedroom: He told them to break in. The man was on his knees, with his horrible hands lifted up in supplication. The soldiers kicked the man up and made him go downstairs into the front room.
"See!" said a soldier, who held his bayonet ready, "there is blood on his sleeve." The Hun cursed within his heart.