The officer listened without saying a word. The adjutant was raging, and would have annihilated the Frenchman if his glance had possessed the power. He bowed respectfully every time the officer looked his way, burning with impatience to say a word to change the state of affairs. The darkness, which prevented the lieutenant from seeing the adjutant’s anguished expression, saved the situation. The commander of the camp no doubt thought that the N.C.O. came to present the interpreter and support his request. The weather was cold, the hour late and the lieutenant wanted to get home; perhaps at the end of the day, when he was going to see his wife and children, he felt a little kinder-hearted, and so it was that, cracking his whip, he went off saying: “Schneider, see that this man is set free.” Heels clacked together, and the two men saluted the departing officer. In the darkness they stared at each other, not daring to give expression to their feelings. One of them would have liked to show his joy and relief, but he was a prisoner; the other, by a rude blow with the butt-end of the musket, would have loved to show the Frenchman that one dared not mock at a Prussian with impunity. But the law stood there, rigid and menacing. Sulky, calling down imprecations on himself, swearing at the lieutenant, the Frenchman and the Englishman, the French and the English, all the Allies in general and all his superiors, the German made sign to the interpreter to follow him. They went towards the pillory. “Undo this man.” But the Frenchman wanted his victory to be complete, and the humiliation of the Boche to know no limit. He tried feebly to undo the knots; he did not succeed. “You have tied them too tightly,” he said to the Teuton, “and my hands are frozen with the cold; I cannot undo them.” “Come, try again. You must untie this man. You wished to do it.” “All right!” The interpreter took his knife from his pocket and began to cut the almost new rope, when the German, swearing, stopped him. Then one might have seen a sight, the contemplation of which would have been sweet to every prisoner. In the black night a German adjutant undoing with his own hands and by the orders of a superior officer the bonds of a hated Englishman, whom he would have liked to see perish with pain and cold, and this under the contemptuous eyes of a Frenchman whom he had hoped to summon before a war-council, and to send to shiver on the straw of a cell. The work finished, the Boche, full of rage and shame, rolled up the rope. Then he went away, and the dark, frosty night swallowed him up. The unhappy Scotsman, worn out and frozen, could scarcely stand. The pains caused by the returning circulation were intolerable. The interpreter offered him the help of his arm and insisted on accompanying him to his tent.