14
The silence of the house made him feel restless.
"I'll go to bed," he exclaimed. "I may as well get all the sleep I can."
He went to his room, and stumbled towards the windows.
"I'll close the shutters while I'm undressing;" he went on. "I don't want to be 'potted' needlessly!"
He tried to see into the Park, but the great masses of trees that undulated like a rough sea, prevented him from seeing anything. There were figures at the gate ... on guard!
"I wonder if that little red-haired man's still there," he thought. "Poor devils! Some of them must feel damned queer to-night!..."
He closed the shutters, and switched the light on, and then, when he had undressed he darkened the room again. "I must have some air," he said, opening the shutters.
He climbed into bed. Now and then a rifle-shot was fired, and sometimes there was a succession of shots....
"In the morning," he said, as he turned on his side and closed his eyes, "they'll be cleared out of that!..."
THE THIRTEENTH CHAPTER
1
He awoke suddenly, and sat up in bed. "Good Lord!" he exclaimed, "I've been asleep!" It was still dark, but less dark than it was when he came to bed. He could just see the time by holding his watch close to his eyes. "Four," he murmured. It was strange that he should have slept at all, for there had been spasmodic firing all night. He got out of bed, and went across his room to the window, and looked out, and as he looked, the wounded horse struggled to rise, pawing the ground feebly, and then fell over on its side. "It isn't dead!..." When he had looked at it last, it had been lying very still, and he had thought it was dead.
He looked across the road to the Park gates, but could not see any one standing there. "Perhaps they've gone!" There was a shapeless thing lying on the ground, outside the gates, but he could not make out what it was. In the dim light, it looked like a great piece of paper ... the debris of a windy day.
There was no movement anywhere ... the horse was still now ... but now and then a single shot rang out, and then came a volley. "You'd think they were just trying to make a noise! I wonder what's been happening all night," he said, as he went back to bed.