Part 128

"Think of it! He was coming on his motor cycle full speed toward Sais through the night, when right ahead he saw a car drawn up beside the road, and four men standing in it with pistols aimed at him. Only one bullet hit him, making a deep furrow over his temple. He remembers losing control of the motor cycle, of being hurled through the air. Then, evidently some time afterward, he found himself struggling under a thin covering of dirt and sticks and lumps of sod--fighting for air, pushing, creeping, crawling out of the hasty and shallow grave where they had flung him beside his ruined motor cycle. He thinks that the frame of the motor cycle kept him from being suffocated by the sod and earth piled over him.

"It was early morning; a peasant was breaking ground in another field not far away, and Mr. Gray managed to crawl near enough to make the man hear. That is all he remembers until he regained consciousness once more in the man's cottage."

"Good heavens, what a ghastly experience!" muttered Warner.

"It is dreadful. If they knew that his heart still beat, it was inhuman of them to do such a thing as that. But perhaps they considered him dead. He may have appeared so. I have had to bandage both arms and both knees where he was hurled over the ground when he fell. He has a fracture of the left wrist which is doing nicely, and two broken ribs are mending without trouble. As for the scar on his temple, it is nearly closed now. I think all will be well with him. Now, I shall go and prepare him for his little journey."

At the foot of the stairs she paused, turned slowly to Warner, and he thought her lovely face had become somewhat pale.

"I think you said over the telephone that you have had no word from Mr. Halkett?"

"Not a word, Sister Eila."

"Thank you."

*CHAPTER XXVII*

The journey back along the Ausone road was a slow and stifling one. Warner, walking on the left, led the donkey by the head; Philippa moved beside the basket cart on the right. In the cart sat the wounded Englishman, his bandaged head lying on Sister Eila's shoulder.

Through the heavy, suffocating cloud of dust, group after group of fugitives loomed up ahead, coming toward them, parting right and left to let the basket cart and the little, plodding donkey pass through. Sheep were driven aside for them; cattle swung out into the roadside ditches on either hand, halting there with stupid heads turned toward them while the basket cart took right of way.

Once, from the toiling procession behind them, distant shouts arose, and the ground began to quiver and shake; and Warner called out a sharp warning to Philippa and drew the donkey cart out among the dusty weeds of the ditch, while everywhere ahead of them people, cattle, vehicles, were being hurriedly turned out and crowded aside along the grassy roadside gullies.

Louder grew the clamour behind; heavier the jarring of the ground; a mounted gendarme--a marechal de logis--appeared, alternately cantering and galloping his superb horse, and sweeping the crowds aside with vigorous gestures of his white-gloved hand.

Behind him trotted six more gendarmes, sabers sheathed, their single rank stretching the entire width of the road from ditch to ditch. And behind these, in a writhing storm of dust and flying gravel, came the field artillery on a swift, swinging trot, drivers erect in their saddles, kepis strapped tight, sun-scorched faces sweating under masks of dust.

Tan-colored limbers, guns, caissons drawn by powerful, dust-whitened teams, rushed past thudding and clanking, escorted by galloping pelotons of artillerymen armed with saber and carbine, flanked by smart officers flashing all over cherry red and gold.

Battery after battery, with forges and wagons, passed; a fanion with trumpeters sped by; a squadron of remount cavalry in clearer blue jackets followed, then came two squadrons of galloping dragoon lancers, their steel helmets covered with brown holland slips, and the pennons streaming wildly from their lance heads. A gendarme or two galloped in the rear, mere ghosts in the driving dust. And the flying column had passed.

Sister Eila, covering Gray's mouth and nose with her grey-blue sleeve, bowed her head and closed her eyes while the storm of dust and pebbles lasted; then Warner nodded to Philippa, and between them they led out the donkey cart once more and pushed slowly ahead into the oncoming torrent of vehicles--cattle, men, women, and children.

It was nearly noon when they arrived at the Chateau des Oiseaux. A footman aided him to carry Gray upstairs to the room prepared for him.

"Are you all right?" asked Warner doubtfully.

Gray opened his haggard eyes.

"All right, thanks.... May I have a little water, if it's not too much trouble----"

Sister Eila entered the room with a carafe and some lemons; and Warner withdrew.

In the hallway below he encountered Madame de Moidrey and Peggy Brooks in earnest consultation with the village physician--an old man crippled from 1870, and wearing the Legion and an empty sleeve.

Warner shook hands with Dr. Senlis and told him what he knew of Gray's condition. Sister Eila came down presently and everybody greeted her with a warmth which unmistakably revealed her status in Sais.

Presently she went upstairs again with Dr. Senlis. Later the Countess went up. Peggy and Philippa had gone out to the south terrace where the reverberation of the cannonade was now continually shaking the windows, and where, beyond, Ausone, a dark band of smoke stretched like a rampart across the northern sky.

As Warner stood thinking, listening to the dull shock of the concussions rolling in toward them on the wind from the north, the footman, Vilmar, approached him.

"Pardon, Monsieur Warner, but there is a frightful type hanging about whom it seems impossible to drive away----"

"What!" said Warner angrily.