"It seems funny that Captain Hazlewood shouldn't have left any written instructions for me," said Miss Potberry, when she had waited three days in Nish without any news except the rumored fall of Veles. "I'm not sure if I oughtn't to try and join him wherever he is."
"But he's at the front," Sylvia objected.
"I had instructions to report to him," said Miss Potberry, seriously. "I think I'm wasting time and drawing my salary for nothing here. That isn't patriotism. If he'd left something for me to type—but to wait here like this, doing nothing, seems almost wicked at such a time."
Two more days went by; Uskub had fallen; everybody gave up the idea of Anglo-French troops arriving to relieve Nish, and everybody began to talk about evacuation. About six o'clock of a stormy dusk, four days after the fall of Uskub, a Serbian soldier came to the hotel to ask Sylvia to come at once to a hospital. She wondered if something had happened to Michael, if somehow he had heard she was in Nish, and that he had sent for her. But when she reached the school-room that was serving as an improvised ward she found Hazlewood lying back upon a heap of straw that was called a bed.
"Done a damned stupid thing," he murmured. "Got hit, and they insisted on my being sent back to Nish. Think I'm rather bad. Why haven't you left?"
"The line is cut."
"I know. You ought to have been gone by now. You can take my horse. Every one will evacuate Nish. No chance. The Austrians have joined up with the Bulgarians. Bound to fall. I want you to take the keys of my safe and burn all my papers. Don't forget the cipher. Go and do it now and let me know it's done. Quick, it's worrying me. Nothing important, but it's worrying me."
Sylvia decided to say nothing to him about Miss Potberry's arrival in order not to worry him any more. Miss Potberry should have his horse: Nish might be empty as a tomb, but she herself should stay on for news of Michael Fane.
"What are you waiting for?" he asked, fretfully. "Damn it! I sha'n't last forever. That's Antitch you're staring at in the next bed."
Sylvia looked at the figure muffled in bandages. Apparently all the lower part of his face had been shot away, and she could see nothing but a pair of dark and troubled eyes wandering restlessly in the candle-light.