“There is no danger here,” said Stewart, and led the way down across the rough pasture to the road.
As he mounted the wall, moved by some strange uneasiness, he stopped to look back toward the east; but the road stretched white and empty until it plunged into a strip of woodland a mile away.
Somehow he was not reassured. With that strange uneasiness still weighing on him, a sense of oppression as of an approaching storm, he sprang down beside the girl, and they set off westward side by side. At first they could not see the village, which was hid by a spur of rising ground; then, at a turn of the road, they found it close in front of them.
But the road was blocked with fallen trees, strung with barbed wire—and what was that queer embankment of fresh, yellow earth which stretched to right and left?
“The Belgians!” cried the girl. “Come! We are safe at last!” and she started to run forward.
But only for an instant. As though that cry of hers was an awaited signal, there came a crash of musketry from the wooded ridge to the right, and an answering crash from the crest of the embankment; and Stewart saw that light and speeding figure spin half round, crumple in upon itself, and drop limply to the road.
CHAPTER XV
DISASTER
He was beside her in an instant, his arm around her, raising her. He scarcely heard the guns; he scarcely heard the whistle of the bullets; he knew only, as he knelt there in the road, that his little comrade had been stricken down.
Where was she wounded?
Not in the head, thank God! Not in the throat, so white and delicate. The breast, perhaps, and with trembling fingers he tore aside the coat.