The General swung around in his chair and looked at her with keen, thoughtful eyes. “I can’t make promises,” he said at last. “But if any one has deserved to have her father saved it is you. And the army cannot afford to lose Colonel Gordon if there’s a chance of reaching him. Tell us what else you know.”
“I can tell you the weakest point in the line before Château-Plessis. Captain Beattie and I heard two German soldiers talking about it outside his prison window. But he knew it before anyway. It was there that I got through.”
“Wheeler, bring that scale map and put it on the desk,” ordered the General. “Gentlemen, draw up, and Miss Gordon will show us just exactly where she crossed the lines.”
The British officer, rising to obey this invitation, held out his hand to Lucy as he neared the desk. His face had in it something more than a friendly admiration for her brave exploit.
“I want to congratulate you myself, Lucy Gordon,” he said. “I’m your cousin. I’m Janet’s brother, Arthur Leslie.”
CHAPTER XVI
THE YANKS ARE COMING
At daybreak of the morning following Lucy’s departure from Château-Plessis Colonel Gordon awoke to the boom of cannon. He raised his head, listening intently. In a moment he was aware that the fighting had recommenced along the whole front. He guessed that the bombardment extended from Argenton as far south as Cantigny, though as yet the lines in front of Château-Plessis were quiet enough. He rose and dressed and went out into the garden.
The sentry glanced at him with a look of surprise and annoyance, for he was not the only one who had been roused by the guns. Several of the convalescents were strolling about the garden, though in the faint light of a foggy dawn Colonel Gordon could distinguish them but vaguely. Neither could he see the sky beyond the town, but the fog could not prevent his hearing, and his ears told him much. The bombardment was steadily increasing. The German artillery in front of Château-Plessis had gone into action now, and the vibrations of the powerful explosions began to shake the air. From the distant boom of the guns before Argenton to the crash of those but a mile away, the mighty volume of sound rolled ever increasingly on the listeners’ ears.
As Colonel Gordon stood motionless by the garden wall, the figure of a French officer advanced out of the fog and came to his side.