Wardlaw held his breath and kept his seat while Flossie went slowly, languidly, up the stairs. Then, with clenched hands and tortured eyes, he started to his feet.
The last time! God in heaven, could it be truly that?
Never to know the kiss of her childish lips again, never to feel her warm, clinging little arms around his neck!
With bloodshot eyes and still clenched hands he paced the room.
Away in the distance the booming guns broke out again with their dreadful monotone, recalled inexorably the work he had to do. He had weighed it well, pondered it, as he told himself, too long already. The Fort must fall! All other means had failed. Blood had been poured out like water, and to no purpose. Yonder on the hill, thousands of men, obedient unto death, his brothers in arms, had braved the weapons which he, Wardlaw, had stored within those impregnable defences, weapons which had been turned against his own country and his own people with such terrible results. England could not wait while the foreigners were starved into surrender. The Fort must fall without delay. He, Wardlaw, knew the master-key of the position, and also knew that he who used it must be prepared to lose his life. Why had he not used it before?
There were reasons which would satisfy reasonable people: the surprise of the situation, the slowness of the military authorities in inviting his assistance, the probability that, finding themselves without support in a hostile country, the invaders would throw up the sponge. But none of these probabilities had been verified. The Fort was still held by the foreigner; and the Fort must fall!
Edgar Wardlaw was a scientific soldier—not one of those men of bull-dog courage who, obedient to orders, would hurl themselves without thought into a bloody struggle. The mind that can devise and perfect death-dealing armaments is not necessarily, or even probably, a mind that inspires and braces the fighting quality of the every-day soldier. The red badge of courage can indeed be won by men of high-strung nerves and delicate organisation, but it is won at most tremendous cost. Wardlaw had been slow in coming to his resolution, but he would never recede from it. They were arms of love that had enchained him, at the last—the arms of a little child. But now he was breaking even those fond links asunder. He was ready—almost ready.
Pacing the room, he glanced at his watch. It was nearly ten o'clock. Soon she would be asleep. He went over to the sideboard and made a quick yet careful search, finding a small fancy cake, some fruit, and sugar; as Flossie had said, there was always sugar, though other things might fail.
He must delay no longer. Carefully and on tiptoe he went up the creaking stairs. The servants were chattering and laughing in the kitchen, but in the child's bedroom there was not a sound. He entered cautiously. Yes, she was asleep, long lashes resting on the delicately flushed skin, lips slightly parted, one arm thrown out upon her open book.
Wardlaw moved cautiously across the room and stood looking down upon the sleeping child. He looked long, and who shall say with what poignant and unutterable agony of spirit. Then he slipped the paper bag containing what he had brought with him under the pillow, and gently moved the book, lest it should fall upon the floor and wake her. The volume contained two stories, bound up together—"Sintram and his Companions," and "Aslauga's Knight," stories whose leaves come out of the old Saga-land, bringing with them the romance and adventure that charm the children, while also they reveal to older folk the mystic conflict of the human soul. Sintram's Companions, as Wardlaw knew, were Sin and Death, Companions of us all. With Death by his side, Sintram had to ride amid the terrors of the narrow mountain gorge—just as the Pilgrim of the immortal Progress had journeyed through the Valley of the Shadow.