The sentry almost stamps with impatience.
“Go home, dear little Fräulein! Go home at once,” he says. “There is danger abroad to-night. I cannot leave my post, or I would take you home myself.... Holy Saint Christopher! they are coming this way! Go—go—what would his Excellency the Governor say, if he found you here?”
I see quick gleams of wandering lights among the trees—I hear a distant shout! Then, seized by a sudden panic, I turn and fly, with Bertha at my heels—fly back the way I came, never pausing till I find myself once more at the courtyard gate. Here—breathless, trembling, panting—I stop to listen and look back. All is silent;—as silent as before.
“But, liebe Gretchen,” says Bertha, as breathless as myself, “what is to do to-night?”
There is a coming murmur on the air. There is a red glow reflected on the barrack windows ... they are coming! I turn suddenly cold and giddy.
“Hush, Bertha!” I whisper, “we must not stay here. Papa will be angry! Let us go up to the corridor window.”
So we go back into the house, upstairs the way we came, and station ourselves at the corridor window, which looks into the courtyard.
Slowly the glow broadens; slowly the sound resolves itself into an irregular tramp of many feet and a murmur of many voices.
Then suddenly the courtyard is filled with soldiers and lighted torches, and ... and I clasp my hands over my eyes in an agony of terror, lest the picture I drew a few days since should be coming true.
“What do you see, Bertha?” I falter. “Do you—do you see Monsieur Maurice?”