Early in the third year of the war, the grimly enduring town was appalled by a decree, issued from German Headquarters. In reprisal for something said to have happened in far-away Alsace-Lorraine, forty of the leading women of Tourciennes were to be taken as hostages, conveyed to a prison-camp in the north of Germany, and left there indefinitely till the grievance (whatever it was) in Alsace-Lorraine had been adjusted to the satisfaction of the German government. By the third year of the war, every one in Tourciennes knew very well what deportation to a German prison-camp meant: almost sure death, and certainly broken health for the most vigorous men. They had all at one time or another gone to the railway station to meet returned prisoners, ragged, demoralized groups of broken, tubercular skeletons, who had gone away from home elderly but powerful men, leaders in their professions. And these latest hostages were to be women, delicately reared, not in their first youth, many of them already half-ill after three years of war privations. In order to make the deepest possible impression on the public of the captive city the most respected and conspicuous women were chosen, prominent either for their husband’s standing and wealth or for the place they had made for themselves, by their own intelligence and energy: the Directress of the Hospital, a well known teacher of music, the Mayor’s wife, the daughter of a noted professor. Of course, our Octavie was among the number. We knew some of the others, too, either by reputation or personally, and could imagine the heart-sick horror in which their families saw them make their few hasty preparations for departure. Here is a typical case. One of the names on the list was that of Mme. Orléanne, a woman of seventy. She was then so weak from malassimilation of war-food that she had not been out of doors for months! It was nothing less than a death-sentence for her. Her family did not even let her see the list. Her elder daughter, married to a wealthy manufacturer, went to the German officials and offered herself to be deported as a substitute, although she had two children, a girl of eight and a little boy of three! She was accepted, and, death in her heart, set about making up the tiny bundle of necessaries--all they were allowed to carry. Her little girl was old enough to take up the tradition of tragic stoicism of her elders and listened with a blanched face to the instructions of her desperate mother, who told her that there was now nothing but dignity left to Frenchwomen. When the German guard came to tell Mme. Baudoin that the truck which was to carry the hostages away to the railroad was waiting at the door, little Elise, rigid and gray, kissed her mother good-by silently, though after the truck had gone, she fainted and lay unconscious for hours. But Raoul, only a baby, screamed, and struck at the German soldier, clung wildly to his mother