A Door is Locked

Lorraine stood on the terrace beside the brass gatling-gun, both hands holding to Jack's arm, watching the soldiers stuffing the windows of the Château with mattresses, quilts, and bedding of all kinds.

A stream of engineers was issuing from the hallway, carrying tables, chairs, barrels, and chests to the garden below, where other soldiers picked them up and bore them across the lawn to the rear of the house.

"They are piling all the furniture they can get against the gate in the park wall," said Jack; "come out to the kitchen-garden."

She went with him, still holding to his arm. Across the vegetable garden a barricade of furniture--sofas, chairs, and wardrobes--lay piled against the wooden gate of the high stone wall. Engineers were piercing the wall with crowbars and pickaxes, loosening the cement, dragging out huge blocks of stone to make embrasures for three cannon that stood with their limbers among the broken bell-glasses and cucumber-frames in the garden.

A ladder lay against the wall, and on it was perched an officer, who rested his field-glasses across the tiled top and stood studying the woods. Below him a general and half a dozen officers watched the engineers hacking at the wall; a long, double line of infantry crouched behind them, the bugler kneeling, glancing anxiously at his captain, who stood talking to a fat sub-officer in capote and boots.

Artillerymen were gathered about the ammunition-chests, opening the lids and carrying shell and shrapnel to the wall; the balconies of the Château were piled up with breastworks of rugs, boxes, and sacks of earth. Here and there a rifleman stood, his chassepot resting on the iron railing, his face turned towards the woods.