As if she had been a child, the gigantic man lifted her from the ground, and retreated with her in his arms. The conclusion and its execution were the work of a moment. The enemy did not follow these two; to leave that secure retreat would have been madness. But the man who had betrayed them was not to escape unpunished. Shot after shot came from the grotto, and our fugitives on this boundless grassy expanse, in the full glow of this bright moonlight, were a mark for every bullet. Frederic now required threefold time for a path he alone could have trodden in a few moments. Jane had twined her arms around his neck; but even here her resolution did not forsake her; she knew that every movement on her part would retard Frederic's steps, that perfect immobility would lighten his burden, and she lay quiet as the dead in his arms. Around both hissed the bullets, but the French shot badly to-night; not one hit. All at once Frederic shuddered convulsively, then he halted, and a hollow moan of agony broke from his lips.
"For God's sake, are you hit?" cried Jane, and sought to loose herself from his arms, but with iron strength, he held her fast. Then he went on again, but more slowly, more circumspectly than before, Jane heard the agonized convulsive heaving of his breast, she felt something hot and moist ripple down upon her hand now loosened from his neck; but still he went on. She gazed anxiously into his face, clearly defined in the bright moonbeams, and an involuntary terror came over her; she seemed to gaze into the face of her dead father. Frederic's heavy, unintellectual features at this moment had a truly frightful likeness to her own,--to those others the grave so long had hidden. It was this expression which had all at once ennobled and transfigured Frederic's face, and this similarity also betrayed his origin, more clearly than all other proofs; it was the grim determination, the hard, perverse inflexibility of the Forests, it was their stony defiance even of the impossible.
And he indeed had overcome it, the impossible; he bore her away over that grassy level and a stretch beyond into the alley, into the secure protection of the trees, and then only did he let her glide from his arms. Meantime, all had become excitement in the direction of the castle; voices rang out, words of command were heard; quick as lightning, the alarm signal echoed back from the village, and at the head of the soldiers quartered at the castle, Lieutenant Witte stormed up the avenue.
"Are they at the grotto?" he cried, recognizing Frederic by his uniform. "Come with us. Forward!"
He rushed on, the others after him; but Frederic did not join them, he did not go forward. For a moment more he stood upright, then he fell heavily to the earth.
With a cry of agony Jane sank down at his side; but over the leather bonds across the soldier's breast, flowed a deep-red tide--the brother had with his life-blood saved his sister!
[CHAPTER XXVIII.]
The Sacrifice of Blood.
An hour had passed, the fight had proved shorter and less serious than had been apprehended. The enemy, proceeding from the forest and gathering in small numbers at the grotto, had intended to surprise the castle in which the German officers were quartered, and by capturing them to leave the force in the village without leaders, and an easy prey to the attack of their main body. Frederic's cry of alarm had broken up their plan of moving on in perfect silence to the castle, and the hand-to-hand fight in the grotto had been of short duration. A few French fusileers had fallen, half a dozen had been taken prisoners, and the others had fled in wild disorder to the forest. By this movement the secret way of egress had been discovered and guarded. A few of the Germans were more or less seriously wounded; none mortally but Frederic, who was to be the only sacrifice.
They had borne him to Jane's chamber and laid him on her bed. She sat at his side. She had represented her own wound as a very trifling one, which had certainly made flight impossible to her, but was not at all dangerous. Doctor Behrend bandaged the foot but avoided any further treatment, he saw that she was in no mood to heed so slight a wound.