After a time we came to a place that I knew. There were the remains ofa fire--a few smouldering wood ashes still cast a red glow, but thebulk of the ashes were cold. I knew the site of the hut and the hillbehind it up which I had rushed, and in the flickering glow the eyesof the rats still shone with a sort of phosphorescence. The commissaryspoke a word to the officer, and he cried:
'Halt!'
The soldiers were ordered to spread around and watch, and then wecommenced to examine the ruins. The commissary himself began to liftaway the charred boards and rubbish. These the soldiers took and piledtogether. Presently he started back, then bent down and risingbeckoned me.
'See!' he said.
It was a gruesome sight. There lay a skeleton face downwards, a womanby the lines--an old woman by the coarse fibre of the bone. Betweenthe ribs rose a long spike-like dagger made from a butcher'ssharpening knife, its keen point buried in the spine.
'You will observe,' said the commissary to the officer and to me as hetook out his note book, 'that the woman must have fallen on herdagger. The rats are many here--see their eyes glistening among thatheap of bones--and you will also notice'--I shuddered as he placed hishand on the skeleton--'that but little time was lost by them, for thebones are scarcely cold!'
There was no other sign of any one near, living or dead; and sodeploying again into line the soldiers passed on. Presently we came tothe hut made of the old wardrobe. We approached. In five of the sixcompartments was an old man sleeping--sleeping so soundly that eventhe glare of the lanterns did not wake them. Old and grim and grizzledthey looked, with their gaunt, wrinkled, bronzed faces and their whitemoustaches.
The officer called out harshly and loudly a word of command, and in aninstant each one of them was on his feet before us and standing at'attention!'
'What do you here?'
'We sleep,' was the answer.
'Where are the other chiffoniers?' asked the commissary.
'Gone to work.'
'And you?'
'We are on guard!'
'Peste!' laughed the officer grimly, as he looked at the old men oneafter the other in the face and added with cool deliberate cruelty:'Asleep on duty! Is this the manner of the Old Guard? No wonder, then,a Waterloo!'
By the gleam of the lantern I saw the grim old faces grow deadly pale,and almost shuddered at the look in the eyes of the old men as thelaugh of the soldiers echoed the grim pleasantry of the officer.
I felt in that moment that I was in some measure avenged.
For a moment they looked as if they would throw themselves on thetaunter, but years of their life had schooled them
and they remainedstill.
'You are but five,' said the commissary; 'where is the sixth?' Theanswer came with a grim chuckle.
'He is there!' and the speaker pointed to the bottom of the wardrobe.'He died last night. You won't find much of him. The burial of therats is quick!'
The commissary stooped and looked in. Then he turned to the officerand said calmly:
'We may as well go back. No trace here now; nothing to prove that manwas the one wounded by your soldiers' bullets! Probably they murderedhim to cover up the trace. See!' again he stooped and placed his handson the skeleton. 'The rats work quickly and they are many. These bonesare warm!'
I shuddered, and so did many more of those around me.
'Form!' said the officer, and so in marching order, with the lanternsswinging in front and the manacled veterans in the midst, with steadytramp we took ourselves out of the dustheaps and turned backward tothe fortress of Bicetre.
* * * * *
My year of probation has long since ended, and Alice is my wife. Butwhen I look back upon that trying twelvemonth one of the most vividincidents that memory recalls is that associated with my visit to theCity of Dust.
A Dream of Red Hands
The first opinion given to me regarding Jacob Settle was a simpledescriptive statement, 'He's a down-in-the-mouth chap': but I foundthat it embodied the thoughts and ideas of all his fellow-workmen.There was in the phrase a certain easy tolerance, an absence ofpositive feeling of any kind, rather than any complete opinion, whichmarked pretty accurately the man's place in public esteem. Still,there was some dissimilarity between this and his appearance whichunconsciously set me thinking, and by degrees, as I saw more of theplace and the workmen, I came to have a special interest in him. Hewas, I found, for ever doing kindnesses, not involving money expensesbeyond his humble means, but in the manifold ways of forethought andforbearance and self-repression which are of the truer charities oflife. Women and children trusted him implicitly, though, strangelyenough, he rather shunned them, except when anyone was sick, and thenhe made his appearance to help if he could, timidly and awkwardly. Heled a very solitary life, keeping house by himself in a tiny cottage,or rather hut, of one room, far on the edge of the moorland. Hisexistence seemed so sad and solitary that I wished to cheer it up, andfor the purpose took the occasion when we had both been sitting upwith a child, injured by me through accident, to offer to lend himbooks. He gladly accepted, and as we parted in the grey of the dawn Ifelt that something of mutual confidence had been established betweenus.
The books were always most carefully and punctually returned, and intime Jacob Settle and I became quite friends. Once or twice as Icrossed the moorland on Sundays I looked in on him; but on suchoccasions he was shy and ill at ease so that I felt diffident aboutcalling to see him. He would never under any circumstances come intomy own lodgings.