With a too-ready imagination I framed the crafty charges which my enemy would prefer against me. No sense of shame would prevent him from distorting my innocent relations towards his wife into a treacherous attempt upon his honour; he would no doubt trump up some suggestive story of my presence in his house. My unsupported statement of my imprisonment must stand against his specious tale--the word of the accused against that of the injured husband, and he an official with powerful backing. The ridiculous trap into which I had so stupidly fallen would be difficult to explain without derision at any time, but now it was a time of actual war, when any infraction of duty would be punished with the severest penalty; nothing short of death would be a sufficient excuse for my failure to return to my post. I pictured myself, an alien--for a foreigner is always an alien no matter what his merit or service may be--fighting for life against the malevolence of a virulent enemy, contending too against that monstrous perversion of justice which so often sways a court-martial --composed as it is of men little qualified by training for impartial judgment--towards the severest interpretation where an officer without influence is concerned, to win a cheap applause from outsiders and inferiors. My blood ran cold at the thought. I stared at the lanthorn until my eyes ached, and, when I looked elsewhere, the image of the flame only faded to give place to another scene in the drama that tried my fortitude almost beyond endurance: It was early dawn outside the Brouillon Bastion, chilling sheets of fog swept in from over the dull waters, and there, with back against the ramparts, stood a coatless figure, with pinioned arms and bandaged eyes, facing a file of soldiers--the dreadful waiting in the dark, the whispered commands, the sudden movement of the men, and then--I jumped to my feet trembling in every limb, and with shaking hand wiped the gathered perspiration from my forehead, but could not wipe away the vision of the men staring at the motionless figure lying face downward on the trampled grass, dishonoured, never to be spoken of, until the Great Day, when all the injustices of the ages shall be righted and made clear.