"Enough!" called Lambert. "I give you ten minutes to get back into the woods. He of you who then yet lets himself be seen outside does it at his peril!" The Frenchman doubled up his fist, and then bethought himself as to what, under all circumstances, a Frenchman owes himself against German blockheads, and taking off his large, three-cornered hat, made a low bow, turned on his heel, and walked at first slowly, then faster and faster toward the woods, until he fell into a regular trot, evidently to spare the Germans the shame of shooting, after the ten minutes had elapsed, at the messenger of his Most Christian Majesty. "Lord of my life!" cried Anton. "Now I first know him. That is the same fellow, Jacob, who three years ago came to us begging, and who afterward hung about the neighborhood half a year. He called himself Mr. Emil, and said that he had shot a comrade in a duel and had on that account to flee. But others claimed that he was an escaped galley-slave. Afterward he wanted to marry Sally, Joseph Kleeman's black girl, but she said she was too good for a fellow like that, and Hans Kessel, Sally's treasure, once pounded him as limber as a rag, after which he disappeared. Lord of my life! He gives himself out here as a lieutenant, and speaks of his Most Christian Majesty, and is willing to leave us our dear lives--the mean plate-licker, the gallows-bird!" So honest Anton scolded and abused, and asserted that if he did not get this Mr. Emil, or Saint Croix, or whatever the fellow's name was, in front of his rifle, to him the whole sport would be spoiled. The rest would gladly have known what Conrad had before had to do with the French, but their curiosity remained unsatisfied, for Conrad had immediately again gone up, and soon the attention of the besieged was directed to another side. From the barn-yard arose a column of smoke, which every moment became thicker and blacker, until the flames burst forth from the mass. The enemy had made his threat true. It seemed to be a useless barbarity, for the barn was too far from the block-house for the flames to leap across, though the wind, which now began to rise, was blowing toward the house, driving along smoke and sparks. But this whole war was only a continuous chain of such barbarities. This morning Lambert had mentally seen what he now actually saw. He had wrought all this with his own hands, which now the more firmly grasped the barrel of his gun. Then there cracked a shot above and another, and Aunt Ursul called down the stairs: "Be watchful! Eyes left! In the reeds!"