"Surely; but this one will be about a little French heroine named Mathilde. Mathilde was of nearly the same age as Remi, very diffident, like yourself." Joe blushed and hung his head. "She was as timid as she was diffident, but at heart she was a heroic little French girl. They are all like Remi and Mathilde over there.
"This little woman lived in a French garrison town. Not more than two hundred soldiers were stationed there, all the others being at the front fighting the Germans. Quite near the village was an important fort, situated on the River Meuse. It was called Fort Montere and was very carefully guarded by these soldiers.
"The fort was situated about a mile from the village on a rise of ground. It was the custom of the soldiers there to spend a good part of their days in the village, never dreaming that they were in the slightest danger, but the Germans were nearer than they thought.
"One night—it was not far from morning, then—two companies of mounted Germans rode up to the sleeping village, which they surrounded. The commanding officer sent an aide to the mayor, ordering him to see to it that not a person left his home on pain of instant death. The mayor refused to betray his people or the soldiers on the hill. The aide shot him then and there. That was nothing new for a German officer to do. Many worse acts than that have they committed. I know, for I have fought them, and I have seen many things. The people were then notified that disobedience meant further that the village would be burned.
"Not one of the villagers was bold enough to try to warn the French garrison of the peril that awaited them, for it was plain that the Germans were planning to lay in wait for the Frenchmen when they came to the village on the following morning.
"Soon German soldiers began entering the houses, one soldier to each house, in which he took his station, cowering the occupants by terrible threats.
"Little Mathilde, when she heard the soldier assigned to their home bang on the door with the butt of his rifle, fled to the kitchen, where she stood listening and watching. She nearly cried out when the soldier thrust the bayonet of his rifle at her father, and all the resentment of her race at such injustice rose up within her.
"'I shall save them,' she breathed.
"Mathilde slipped out through the kitchen door into the walled garden, and, climbing the wall, peered over. She could see German horsemen and German infantrymen everywhere, the moonlight flashing on their helmets and rifles as they moved rapidly about. How she should be able to get over the wall without discovery she did not know. A heavy black cloud at this moment drifted across the sky, hiding the face of the moon for a few moments, and when the cloud had passed Mathilde was no longer on the garden wall. She lay prone on the ground in a field on the opposite side of the wall. Horsemen were all about her. Now and then a horse narrowly missed stepping on her, and those Uhlans must have wondered that night why their horses were so skittish.