It was the rage in his heart which was his undoing. For once again he came out on the main thoroughfare and stood gazing in the direction of the foreign quarter which was less than half a mile away, a half-mile of loopholed houses and hidden barricades which he was powerless to traverse. This murderous warfare had given the locality a ruined look. Weeds and grass had sprung everywhere; close to him there was a patch of rank weeks almost as tall as a man.
The monotonous cracking of rifles sounded occasionally in the distance, but the cannon on the gateway had become silent. For the morning was advancing and the first energy of the day had evaporated.
He stood there, with his back against a shuttered shop, wondering how he should manage to force his way through that half-mile. He became convinced that this was the wrong road to take; there were too many houses and too many traps. He began moving off. But as he did so he fell in with some soldiers who were wandering listlessly about, seeking pickings in the looted shops.
They cried to him asking him what he was doing. He answered insolently that he, too, was seeking what he could; and after that they captured him. Tying his hands behind him, they struck at him until he wept; and then to humiliate him they tore off his coat and shoes.
One man took the shoes jeeringly and held them up, and said to the others that he would hurl them where they would be lost. But as he did so, his attention was attracted by something. He stopped talking; pushed his fingers in the lining of one shoe; and, after a short pause, pulled out the gold coin which had been so carefully hidden.
"Gold," he cried excitedly as he scrutinized it and rubbed it, "a piece of foreign-gold!"
They cross-examined the boy and beat him again after that, but he would confess nothing about foreigners. He said he had looted the piece of foreign money from a man who must have stolen it. Then they took him up to their Commander, who was the commander on the great gateway with the cannon, and said that they had caught a spy; for this must surely be a spy since he could give no clear account of himself. They detailed the manner of their capture with a wealth of detail—adding details that were not true—and the Commander told them to do as they pleased with him. So they tied him there in front of their barricade, bareheaded and barechested, up there on the city wall, where the foreigners' bullets would surely find him, they told him, when their fire opened on the gun-position as it did every night.
The foreigners found him like that that very night when they executed their unexpected sortie in the dark against the guns that had been posted at the gateway and had annoyed them for several days. By a miracle he was not bayonetted. Providence protected him to the end. He was half carried, half-led by the sortie-party down to the foreign quarter, a great excitement filling them. For there were those who could speak to him in his own language, and they speedily knew who he was since he talked vociferously and unendingly, telling all he had suffered. As in dream he saw his red-bearded master emerge out of the darkness and come towards him with loud exclamations and great strides. But to him he merely said respectfully: "Your Honour, I have returned; but the message the great army gave me is inside me because it was too dangerous to carry and I swallowed it, and by your blessing I shall now die a natural death."
THE END