“This must be the son and heir,” said Larry.

A little boy, just able to run alone, with a yellow thatch of hair above his eager face, and arms outstretched to help his stumbling feet, burst through the trees and made for Lucy, panting, “Guten abend, Fräulein! Fröhliche Weihnacht!”

“Merry Christmas yourself, mein Herr,” Larry responded, stooping to pick up the little German as he tripped and fell over a root in his excitement. “Better look where you’re going.”

“Hurt yourself, Freidrich?” asked Lucy in German, while Michelle brushed pine-needles from the child’s hair.

“Nein,” he answered, still panting, and, rising on tiptoe, tried to peep into the basket that Larry carried, not quite daring to approach the young officer, though burning curiosity was fast overcoming his fear.

The next moment two more children came running from the clearing, the little girl whom Lucy had first seen at the spring, and a boy about a year older than Freidrich. All three wore torn cotton clothing over which ragged coats or shawls were held together by their cold, bare fingers. Their flaxen heads were uncovered and their stockings slipped down over wooden shoes.

“Ça m’étonne,” said Michelle, shaking her head. “The German peasants are very careful with their children, as I remember them.”

“Perhaps they can’t get clothes,” suggested Larry. “Wool is terribly high now in Germany. They are rather nice-looking kids.”

“Yes, a little above the peasant class,” remarked Armand, patting the shoulder of the four-year-old boy, Freidrich’s brother, who walked beside the French officer, casting eager, curious glances up at him. “What is your name, little one?” he asked in German.

The child hung his head in silence, but the little girl, her bright eyes turned for a moment from the basket, the center of all their hopes, answered promptly:

“His name is Wilhelm, Herr Officer, and my name is Adelheid. And our father’s name is Franz Kraft. I am seven years old.”

She ended with a smile and a bobbing curtsey. Larry said, in a peculiar German something like Bob’s, “Thank you, my little maiden.” He was about to ask her if the cottage which now appeared in sight was her home, but his German failing him, he asked it instead of Lucy in English, remarking, “He must do quite a business—this Franz. He has enough wood cut already to 

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