(AN IDYLL BETWEEN THE TRENCHES, 1914) (Note.--This story is founded upon an actual occurrence narrated by Paul Grabein, "Im Auto durch Feindesland," Berlin, 1916.) The sun set while a regiment of Zouaves was marching across the plateau. The after-glow yet illumined the sky when its leading files turned obliquely off to the right along a rough track that presently dropped abruptly into a deep ravine, sculped by one of the streamlet tributaries of the Oise. Bare for a little way below the lip, save for some scattered juniper bushes stiffly perpendicular from the close-cropped slope, the sides of the ravine were dark with a dense growth of tree and thorn. The road plunged into it. Down and down went the road in a gloomy tunnel of arching boughs that scarce left an interstice for the twilight sky. It reached the floor of the little valley, followed it to the right in a more gentle descent. On its left a brook fell swiftly through a plantation of silver birch in a channel that brimmed to the long, rank, water-flattened grass and anon plashed over boulders in a miniature cascade. Save for the steady tramp of the marching troops and the occasional squawk of a frightened jay, there was no sound in the valley. Mounted upon a magnificent black horse, the colonel rode at the head of the column. Seen in profile, his face was remarkable--virile, powerful, and intellectual. When it turned to full face it fascinated. Not the steel-grey eyes looked for under those level brows, but a pair of full brown orbs, romantic as those of an Arab, met the gaze. He raised his hand as the column approached a pair of high ornamental iron gates, set in a frame of lofty arched stone and surmounted by a carved escutcheon, on the left side of the road. "Halt!" Behind him there was a clatter of accoutrements as the long column broke its ranks, settled itself in seated groups, with piled arms, by the roadside. In front, the advance-guard, receiving the order from the connecting files, halted also. The colonel walked his horse to the gates. The padlocked chain that had held them closed hung broken from one of the wrought-iron scrolls. The gates had evidently been forced. He pressed his horse's flank against one of them, slipped through the opening, and set off at a trot down a long avenue of ancient poplars. His capitaine-adjutant, cantering up from the leading company, followed the wave of his hand. Beyond the clearing of lawn and Cupid-crowned fountain into which he emerged, lay a long white stone mansion, picturesque but not remarkable in its seventeenth-century architecture. Every window was shuttered. Throwing the reins to his companion, he dismounted and, with the stiff gait from long hours in the saddle, ascended the broad curving steps to the main entrance. Only at his second summons on the loud, harshly clanging bell was there any answering sign of life. One of the great doors opened slightly until checked by a chain, and a woman's voice asked: "Who is it?"