“Then you know the way?”
“Nae,” Corporal Findlay replied. “I was too rushed and scared that night to remember much. The only thing I can remember seeing plainly is those two corpses swinging from the beam—Sergeant Mackay’s and the gude wife’s—and the scene comes back to me vividly now as I look at this guide of ours. Why, I dinna ken.”
“Be ready to shoot him, mon, the instant there’s treachery,” the Sergeant whispered.
“Aye, Aye!” Corporal Findlay replied, tapping the barrel of his rifle knowingly. “He’ll nae want a second dose.”
On and on they tramped, till presently they forsook the highway for a field, and then, plunging down and down, eventually found themselves upon level ground facing some trees. “This is the wood,” the guide observed, “and here is the path. After we have travelled along it in Indian file, and on tiptoe, for two miles, we shall emerge into a small clearing, where a low mud wall, overtopped by a machine gun, will confront us. The soldiers supposed to be on duty there have been drinking red wine all day, and are now sleeping. If you approach noiselessly you will be able to climb the wall and take them by surprise. The cottage is then yours.”
“But there are sentries in the wood.”
“One! He will be leaning on his rifle dozing. You must creep up to him and settle him before he has time to make a sound. I will tell you when we approach him.”
The guide advanced, and the whole battalion of O——s stalked along behind him.
“I shall be gay glad when this job is over,” Corporal Findlay murmured. “I would as soon spend the night in a kirkyard.”
However, although every now and then a rustling of leaves that heralded a rabbit made them start, and the ominous screech of an owl caused the hair on the scalp of more than one superstitious Celt to bristle, so far there was no real cause for alarm, and on and on the battalion stole. At last their guide halted, and every man behind him instantly followed suit. He whispered to Corporal Findlay and the Sergeant, and, making way to let them pass, kept close to their heels, guiding them by what appeared to be a minute bull’s-eye lantern.