Two miles were covered, and poor Henry was almost exhausted. More than once he thought to sit down and rest. But he realized that this would be madness. “I’d never get up again,” he told himself. “It would be the sleep of death!”
At last, when he could scarcely drag one limb after the other, he espied a light shining from the upper window of a small house some distance away. He fairly staggered toward this, and, reaching the house, knocked loudly on the door.
After a moment of silence an upper window was opened, and an old woman peered down from out of her night-cap.
“Who is there, and what is desired?” she asked in French.
“I am freezing!” said Henry in English. “Let me in.”
The old women did not understand his words, but she seemed to understand the situation, and soon hobbled downstairs and threw open the door. Henry almost fell into the kitchen, and sank into a heap before the fire which smoldered in the big chimney-place.
“Poor fellow—and so young!” murmured the old French woman. “He is almost frozen.” And she bustled about, stirred up the fire, and put on some fresh sticks of wood, and then made him some hot tea to drink.
It was a good half-hour before Henry felt anything like himself. He was given some bread and butter, and some warmed-up meat and another cup of tea. The old woman plied him with questions, and he had a hard task to make her understand that he wished to remain at the house until daylight. But when he pointed to the fire, and then at himself, and made out as if he was sleeping and snoring, she smiled and nodded her head in assent.
It must be confessed that Henry slept but little that night, even though his couch on a blanket before the smoldering fire was a fairly comfortable one. His brain was racked with the question of what to do on the morrow. Traveling during the daytime would be extremely hazardous, so long as he remained in the English lines, and when he crossed into the French lines the situation would be just as bad.
“And it’s too cold to travel at night,” he thought dismally.