The village seemed even more ominous than before, now it was half dark, and not a light in the abandoned houses. Some English transport was crossing the square, however, with the patient sour look of men going “into it” again--“it,” the battle. She turned into the steep silent alley that led through the iron grille, to the “drive” of the château, and broke into a run again on the smooth gravel. She had not gone twenty yards before she jumped as if shot. A black figure had risen behind the trunk of a tree with a sharp “Hish!” She fell sideways, clutching an elm sapling that bent with her, staring. The figure made two steps towards her, and she, petrified, could only maintain her balance and stare. Then with infinite relief she heard: “Tiens, it’s you, Madeleine! What do you want?” “Why, Monsieur le Baron, I didn’t know you!” “Be quiet then. There is some one wandering round the château. It may be the Bosche!” “What, are they here?” “The village has been formally evacuated. One expects them from one moment to another!” At that instant steps and voices could be heard on the terrace surrounding the house, which, on account of the winding of the drive by way of the old moat, was just above the level of their eyes. The Baron, quivering all over, not with fear, but with sporting instinct, brought his spiked camp stool to the charge, and tiptoed noiselessly up the bank. Madeleine, clutching her skirt with one hand, swinging herself up by the undergrowth with the other, arrived beside him just in time to see two familiar Australian figures looming leisurely in the darkness. In another instant the Baron would have sprung, with no one knows what results. Madeleine pushed past him, stepped over the flower-bed that bordered the terrace, and walked up to the visitors, addressing them in their own inimitable language, learned from their own lips in the kitchen of the Spanish Farm: “Hello, Digger, what you want?” The tall lean men turned without surprise: “To get in,” replied the nearer. Madeleine hastily translated. The Baron, after staring a moment, led the way to the back. The château possessed, of course, no bell or knocker, as Leon, the concierge, or his wife, were always to be found near the gate, to steer frontdoor visitors round to their appropriate entrance, and open for them. Lesser mortals came to the kitchen door, where Placide dealt with them as St. Peter is reported to deal with ambitious souls in another place. Since the war, and more especially since the concierge and all his family had been evacuated, the whole of the windows and doors were closed, bolted and shuttered. The first object that met the gaze of the little party, as they rounded the corner of the building, was Leon’s garden ladder, reared against the window of the Baron’s dressing-room, in the eastern wing, from which protruded the hindquarters and legs of a man, in stout service riding breeches and dirty boots.