They were led from the walled-in garden and across the cobblestones of the little street that terminated in a cul de sac just above. Over the way stood the shattered remnants of a building that once had been pointed to with pride by the simple villagers as the finest shop in town. The day was hot. Worn-out German troopers sprawled in the shade of the walls, sound asleep, their mouths ajar,--beardless boys, most of them. "Poor devils," said François, as he passed among them. He too was very young. They were shoved through the wrecked doorway into the mortar-strewn ruin, and, stumbling over masses of débris, came to the stone steps that led to the cellar below. Louis drew back with a groan. He had spent centuries in that foul pit. "Not there--again!" he moaned. He was whimpering feebly as he picked himself up at the bottom of the steps a moment later. "Dogs!" cried François, glaring upward and shaking his fist at the heads projecting into the turquoise aperture above. Far on high, where the roof had been, gleamed the brilliant sky. "Our general will make you pay one of these days,--our GREAT general!" Then he threw his arms about his brother's shoulders and--cried a little too,--no in fear but in sympathy. The trap door dropped into place, a heavy object fell upon it with a thud, and they were in inky darkness. There was no sound save the sobs of the two boys, and later the steady tread of a man who paced the floor overhead,--a man who carried a gun. They had not seen, but they knew that a dead man lay over in the corner near a window chocked by a hundred tons of brick and mortar. He had died some time during the second century of their joint occupance of the black and must hole. On the 28th he had come in with them, wounded. It was now the 31st, and he was dead, having lived to the age of nine score years and ten! When they spoke to their guards at the beginning of the third century, saying that their companion was dead and should be carried away, the Germans replied: "There is time enough for that," and laughed,--for the Germans could count the time by hours out there in the sunshine. But that is not why they laughed. A hidden French battery in the wooded, rocky hills off to the west had for days kept up a deadly, unerring fire upon the German positions. Shift as he would, the commander could not escape the shells from those unseen, undiscovered guns. They followed him with uncanny precision. His own batteries had searched in vain, with thousands of shrieking shells, for the gadfly gunners. They could find him, but he could not find them. For every shell he wasted, they returned one that counted. Three French scouts fell into his hands on the night of the 28th. Two of them were still alive. He had them up before him at once.