"Your choice?" asked the uhlan, impatiently, after a moment's pause.

Bernadou's lips were white, but they did not tremble as he answered,
"I am no traitor." And his eyes, as he spoke, went softly to the little
porch where the light glowed from that hearth beside which he would
never again sit with the creatures he loved around him.

The German looked at him. "Is that a boast, or a fact?"

"I am no traitor," Bernadou answered, simply, once more.

The Prussian gave a sign to his troopers. There was the sharp report of
a double shot, and Bernadou fell dead. One bullet had pierced his brain,
the other was bedded in his lungs. The soldiers kicked aside the warm
and quivering body. It was only a peasant killed!

With a shriek that rose above the roar of the wind, and cut like steel
to every human heart that beat there, Reine Allix forced her way through
the throng, and fell on her knees beside him, and caught him in her
arms, and laid his head upon her breast, where he had used to sleep his
softest sleep in infancy and childhood. "It is God's will! it is God's
will!" she muttered; and then she laughed--a laugh so terrible that the
blood of the boldest there ran cold.

Margot followed her and looked, and stood dry-eyed and silent; then
flung herself and the child she carried in her arms beneath the hoof
of the white charger. "End your work!" she shrieked to them. "You have
killed him--kill us. Have you not mercy enough for that?"

The horse, terrified and snorting blood, plunged and trampled the