Bernadou was seized by several hands and forced and dragged from his door out to the place where the leader of the uhlans sat on a white charger that shook and snorted blood in its exhaustion. Bernadou cast off the alien grasp that held him, and stood erect before his foes. He was no longer pale, and his eyes were clear and steadfast.
“You look less a fool than the rest,” said the Prussian commander. “You know this country well?”
“Well!” The country in whose fields and woodlands he had wandered from his infancy, and whose every meadow-path and wayside tree and flower-sown brook he knew by heart as a lover knows the lines of his mistress’s face!
“You have arms here?” pursued the German.
“We had.”
“What have you done with them?”
“If I had had my way, you would not need ask. You would have felt them.”
The Prussian looked at him keenly, doing homage to the boldness of the answer. “Will you confess where they are?”
“No.”
“You know the penalty for concealment of arms is death?”