They were burning the place street by street
with that method of theirs! They fired the houses with pastilles their
chemists have invented, and with petrol. The air was thick with smoke.
We shut our windows to save the wounded from coughing. Soon we might all
die together, but we would keep our boys from new sufferings while we
could!
"Then at last the hour struck for us. One of our sisters, who had run to
look at the red sky to see how near the fire came, cried out that
Germans were pouring up the hill--four officers on horseback heading a
troop of soldiers. I knew what that meant. I went quickly to the door to
meet them. My knees felt as if they had broken under my weight. My heart
was a great, cold, dead thing within me. My mouth was dry as if I had
lost myself for days in the desert. I am not a small woman, yet it
seemed that I was no bigger than a mouse under the stare of those big
men who leaped off their horses, and made as if to pass me at the door.
But I did not let them pass. I knew I could stop them long enough at
least to kill me and then the sisters, one by one, before they reached
our wounded! We backed slowly before them into the hall, the sisters and
I, to stand guard before this room.
"'You are hiding Frenchmen here--French soldiers!' a giant of a captain
bawled at me. Beside him was a lieutenant even more tall. They had
swords in their hands, and they both pointed their weapons at me.
"'We have nineteen soldiers desperately wounded,' I said.
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