“Come,” she said, starting to her feet. “Let us go. I am quite rested.”
She was a few paces ahead of me, and I let her keep the place for a moment that I might admire her erect and graceful figure, when suddenly she shrank back against me with a little cry of fright.
“What is it?” I asked. “You are not hurt?”
“No, no,” she whispered; “but yonder—creep forward and look.”
There was a sharp turn in the road and as I went forward cautiously and looked around it my heart stood still. For there, not two hundred yards distant, was encamped a regiment of infantry—the same perhaps that we had seen pass that afternoon. I contemplated the camp in silence for a moment, noting how it lay in the little valley, then I drew back and rejoined my comrade.
“There is no danger,” I said. “We must make a wide detour and avoid these fellows.”
I searched along the hedge until I found a place where I could break through, and in a moment we were together in the field on the other side. Cautiously we crept away up the hillside until the lights of the camp gleamed faint behind us; then we went forward past them. There was no danger of our being seen, despite the brightness of the moonlight, for the field was full of sheep—the same we had seen pass, no doubt—and at a distance, so low we crept, we could not be distinguished from them. We came to another hedge and broke a passage through it, and I was just turning back toward the road when a low moan behind me brought me sharp around.
“What is it?” I asked again, and stretched out my arms and caught her, or she would have fallen.
“My ankle,” she gasped, her lips white to the very edge. “I turned it back yonder. I thought I could walk on it but—oh!” and she shivered and hid her face against my shoulder.
I placed her gently on the ground and with trembling fingers undid the laces of her shoe. She shivered again with agony at my touch and closed her eyes. I felt that the ankle was already swelling, and the sweat poured down my face as I realized what anguish she was in.