Without waiting for an answer she was gone, and Lucy shrank close against the brick wall of the house behind her, and stood there with suddenly quaking heart, and ears listening vainly for any other sound than the occasional bursts of shell fire. In five minutes Elizabeth was back again, and the moment she spoke Lucy felt the joyful relief in her voice.
“Oh, Miss Lucy,” she said, softly, “the best of luck we have! The guard inside the house sits—where was the office. They are a couple of sleepy fellows, leaning on their guns. I watch the door while you in back to the barred windows go. So soon as the guard should move I come to warn you. So in the dark we safely get away.”
“Elizabeth, you’re a brick!” Lucy whispered, squeezing her companion’s hand in eager gratitude, as she followed her toward the dark wall of the old building.
A square of light showed on the side toward the church, and here Elizabeth took up her watch from the shadow of the corner, leaving Lucy, carrying the little spoils of Mère Breton’s garden in her cloak, to make her way to the right, or prison end of the building. With a hard clutch at her already waning courage, Lucy felt with her free hand for the angle of the corner on the rough stone wall, and stepping cautiously around it, reached the side of the prison which opened on a narrow courtyard.
She stared up at the wall, seeing no break at first in its dim outline, but, as she looked, three windows detached themselves faintly from the shadows. In another moment she could see that each was criss-crossed with bars. Only one course of action suggested itself to her excited mind, and whatever its drawbacks she dared not delay. She went close up to the first window and, dropping her cape, stood on tiptoe and put her face against the bars. She could see nothing inside the room but, making a trumpet of her hands, she said, “Captain Beattie!”
She dared not call out, for as luck would have it, in the last five minutes there had come a decided pause in the firing, and a loud voice might very well carry between the shots. The occupant of the cell made no response, only Lucy fancied that she heard some one sigh, and the rustle of a straw mattress beneath a sleeper’s weight. With pounding heart she stood a minute longer listening, then stepping back, crept on to the next window. She reached up on tiptoe to grasp the bars, and as she did so her fingers touched something soft inside—somebody’s clothing. At the same moment a voice, speaking within a few inches of her face, asked breathlessly in English, “Who’s that?”
Lucy’s heart gave a wild throb of triumph. “Captain Beattie?” she stammered, clutching at the bars.
“Yes—who on earth——?” The voice was shaky with bewilderment. Lucy knew she had not a second to lose. She said hastily:
“You remember the girl who translated the German questions for you, the day the town was taken? I’m an American; my father is an officer—wounded—and I came to see him from England and couldn’t get away in time.”
“But what are you doing here now?” asked the amazed young Englishman. As he spoke, his hand reached through the bars for Lucy’s, as though to establish the comradeship of touch out of the darkness.