Arthur T. Quiller-Couch

“ This time, after another roar of artillery fire, the defenders in the grove came pouring back with the black-gaitered men close upon them, intercepting and shooting them down by scores.
Then followed half an hour's horrible work all along the garden wall; work of which (and they should have thanked Heaven for it) the children missed the worst, seeing only the red-coats jabbing across the wall and downwards with their bayonets; the riflemen at the loopholes firing, drawing back, pausing to re-load. The small door had been shut fast, and a dozen men held their weight against it. ”

“ They went through the small doorway into the garden. Pauline followed. Again the visitor seemed to regard the long brick wall—in front of which grew a neglected line of shrubs, making the best of its northern aspect—as its most interesting feature.
"Might have been built for the very purpose with these buttresses." He stopped towards one and held the edge of his palm against it, almost half-way down. "But you must cut it down, so." He spoke as if the brickwork were a shrub to be lopped. "Have you a nice lot of planks handy?" ”

“ Jean plucked Pauline by the sleeve. The two stole away together to the ladder that stood against the pigeon-house.
"We hear no news of the world at all," said the gardener's wife. "My man at this season is so wrapped up in his roses——"
"Holà, neighbour!" called the gardener at this moment, coming forth from the chapel, the visitor behind him. "You are stealing a march on us, it seems? Now as a friend the best you can do is to drive ahead and bespeak some room at the village for my wife and little ones, while they pack and I get out the carts." ”

“ His wife turned on him in a twitter.
"My good woman," interposed the visitor, coming forward—at sight of whom the farmer gave a gasp and then lifted his whip-head in a flurried (and quite unheeded) salute—"it is true, I regret to say, that to-night and to-morrow this house will be no place for you or for your children. Your husband may return if he chooses, when he has seen you safely bestowed. Indeed, he will be useful and probably in no danger until to-morrow."
"The children—where are the children?" quavered the gardener's wife, and began calling, "Jean! Pauline!" ”

“ He is in the garden at this moment if you wish to see him."
"I do," said the visitor, after a sharp glance around the courtyard, and another at its high protecting wall. "Take me to him, please!"
Pauline led him by a little gateway past the angle of the château and out upon the upper terrace of the garden—planted in the formal style—which ran along the main (south) front of the building and sloped to a stout brick wall some nine feet in height. Beyond the wall a grove of beech trees stretched southward upon the plain into open country. ”

“ One would say they had forgotten their roosting house."
"The birds will return when the corn is spread," answered Philomène comfortably. "As for little Antoine, if he be not fetched, he shall have supper, and I myself will see him home across the fields. The child has courage enough to go alone, if we pack him off now, before nightfall; but I doubt the evil characters about. There are always many such in the track of an army."
"If that be so," the gardener's wife objected, "it will not be pleasant for you, when you have left him, to be returning alone in the dark. ”

“ On the far side of it the children struck a footpath which ran down across a rye-field to the plantation. The rain had ceased, and above the rye many larks were singing, though the clouds hung grey and heavy. The loose firing, too, had ceased. Trees and the backs of a few cottages on their left, denser woodland ahead of them, circumscribed the view here. Not a soldier was in sight. There was nothing to be heard save the larks' chorus.
"But, of course," exclaimed Pauline, recollecting, "it is Sunday. People do not fight on Sunday."
"Are you sure?" asked Jean, with a touch of disappointment. ”

“ I "It is strange, though," said the gardener's wife in Flemish, standing in the doorway of the chapel and studying, while she shook her duster, the tall pigeon-house in the centre of the courtyard. "The birds have not come back yet. Not a sign of them."
"They never like it when their house is cleaned out," responded Philomène, the middle-aged maid-of-all-work, just within the doorway. She, too, had a duster and, perched on a step-ladder insecurely—she weighed, by our English reckoning, a good fifteen stone—was flapping the dust from a tall crucifix nailed above the lintel. ”

“ They mounted to the terrace and passed back into the courtyard, Pauline still following. Antoine's father had arrived to fetch him; had arrived too with a cart. The cart held a quantity of household furniture. The farmer held the reins, and the gardener's wife and Philomène were hoisting the child up beside him. They were agitated, as anyone could see, and while her father led the visitor into the chapel Pauline walked over to Jean, who stood watching, to ask him what it all meant.
"He says the war is coming back this way: it may even be to-night." ”

“ They had not seen the children, who now, climbing up the ladder, stayed not until they had squeezed through the square hole of the platform and crawled into the pigeon-house, where they lay panting.
It was, of course, quite foolish to seek shelter here. For the moment they would have been far safer in the courtyard below, under the lee of the outbuildings. A ball, striking the pigeon-house, would knock it to shivers at one blow. ”

“ His voice pleaded so—it was so strange and womanly, coming from a man of his strength and inches—that they followed him almost without demur, out by the gateway and around the sunken lane at the back of the buildings, where (for it was dark) they had to pick their steps for fear of stumbling over the dead. ”

“ He says that it will certainly rain to-night."
"It has been raining to the southward all the afternoon," said Philomène, heavily descending her step-ladder and shielding her eyes to stare up at the western window, through the clear quarrels of which the declining sun sent a ray from under heavy clouds. "That will be by reason of the guns."
"Thunder," suggested the gardener's wife.
"The guns bring the thunder; it is well known." In her girlhood Philomène had been affianced to a young artilleryman ”

“ He wears his jacket, of course—the same as mine." The tall man spanned his chest and turned towards the dying daylight, so that the bars of yellow braid showed between his fingers. "Only the facings will be of gold. ”