The old man did not seem quite to understand, but he turned again to his map. "Here now is ze new road," he said, drawing it with his shaky old hand. "From ze Rhine road it runs—south—so. Now you are so clevaire—Yankee clevaire, ha, ha, ha!" he laughed with a kind of irritating hilarity; "why should zey make ziss road? From ze north—from Leteur—all around—zey bring our women to make ziss road. Ziss is where Mam'selle is—so! Close by it lives my comrade, Blondel. Ziss is noble army to command, ugh!" He gritted his teeth. "All are women!"
Tom looked at the map, as old Melotte poised his skinny finger above it and peered eagerly up into his face from the depths of his scraggly white hair. It was little enough Tom knew about military affairs and he thought that this lonesome old weaver was in his dotage. But surely this new road could be for but one purpose, and that was the quick transfer of troops from the Alsatian front to the Swiss border. And the sudden conscription of women and girls for the making of the road seemed plausible enough. Could it be that this furnished a clew to the whereabouts of Florette Leteur? And if it did, what hope was there of reaching her, or of rescuing her?
He listened only abstractedly to the old man's rambling talk of Germany's intention to violate Swiss neutrality if that became necessary to her purpose. His eyes were half closed as he looked at the rough sketch and he saw there considerably more than old Melotte had drawn.
He saw Frenchy's sister Florette, slender and frail, wielding some heavy implement, doing her enforced bit in this work of shameless betrayal. He could see her eyes, sorrow-laden and filled with fear. He could see her as she had stood talking with him that night in the arbor. He could see her, orphaned and homeless, slaving under the menacing shadow of a German officer who sprawled and lorded it in the poor home of this Blondel close by the new road. Here he climb to drop ze grapes down my neck. Bad boy! Strange, how that particular phrase of hers singled itself out and stuck in his memory.
"So now you are so clevaire," he half heard old Melotte saying to Archer.
And Tom Slade said nothing, only thought, and thought, and thought....