"I have had nothing to eat for twenty hours," he said; "naturally I came here for food." The Prussian interrupted him with a brutal laugh. "Then you certainly live on vermin, my bag of bones," he retorted, with a jeer. "Come, your time is nearly up, and my fingers are impatient. You will really be very foolish if you are not candid with me." He raised the pistol slowly, and deliberately touched Sadi's forehead with the cold barrel. The lantern's light showed a hard face and small eyes set above puffy cheeks. He wore a moustache in the French fashion and an uncouth imperial, which added to his grotesque appearance. Sadi knew that such a man would think it no greater crime to shoot a Frenchman than to drown a dog. Heroically as he had philosophized about death ten minutes ago, the nearer presence of it was very dreadful to him. He could imagine the sting of the bullet as it crashed through his forehead, the sudden giddiness, the voice which said, "Never again shall you speak, or breathe, or look up to the sun." A desperate desire of life came to him. He trembled violently, pressed his hand to his heart, but could not utter a single word. The Prussian watched him without compassion. He began to count ironically, "One, two, three," he said; "I will count ten, _canaille_," and he started off from the beginning again. He was at the number "five" when a second voice in the cellar caused him to turn sharply upon his heel and then to salute in the rigid German fashion. "Ah, Herr Lieutenant, here is a job for you," he exclaimed, as though glad to be quit of the responsibility. "I found this rat in the hole here. Look at him for yourself and see what kind of a rogue he is." The new-comer was quite a youth, a fair, freckled German lad, in little more than his twentieth year. He, too, wore a French uniform, but it was that of the artillery, and Sadi observed that it was a better fit than the loose clothes of the rough customer who had just been threatening him. Such trifling facts occupied the fiddler's mind to the exclusion of all else. He believed that he was about to die, and yet could count the buttons on the lieutenant's tunic, guess at the State he came from, and hazard the colour of his eyes. The lad was a Bavarian, he said, a merry, laughing youngster. Impossible to believe that he would sanction a brutal murder. Sadi breathed quickly--he appealed to the lad's sympathy in an earnest, manly voice. [Illustration: "HE RAISED THE PISTOL SLOWLY."] "Herr Lieutenant, it is nothing of the kind," he protested; "I am a poor wretch of a fiddler, whose garret your people have just burned." It was not a wise thing to have said, and the young soldier's interruption told Sadi as much. "My people, sir!" he cried, sharply, and with feigned astonishment. "What people do you mean, then?" "It is as I say," interrupted the trooper; "he is a spy who has tracked us to our hole, Herr Lieutenant. Better make an end of him while there is time."