"Up there? It is an empty space between the roof and the ceiling."
The man seemed satisfied with the explanation; the big boots got down again; they paused; they had found nothing. At length they made up their minds to go out; they disappeared from sight; they went to search the next house. A week after these operations the villagers still talked about them.
"Has your house been carefully searched?"
"Oh, dear! dear! they have looked even into the saucepans!"
"They have gone through the papers in my desk."
"They have climbed upon the beams of our roof."
The visitors seldom found anything worth while—one or two pigeons which their owners had hidden in the attic, and for which they had to pay fifty francs each. Other villages were less happy. For a trifle a man was considered suspect, and taken into custody. If a cartridge happened to be discovered in a house, the owner was arrested and sent to Laon, Hirson, or still farther off—and after the retreat of August what urchin had not a collection of French and Belgian cartridges?
A gentleman-farmer of the neighbourhood was put into prison under the pretence that he talked German too much! Another was arrested all of a sudden without any apparent reason.
"But why am I arrested?"
"Go on, you will know later."