“I will go,” said she. “They won’t shoot me, that is certain.”
She looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair was untidy and sifted over it were twigs and dust and the pollen of flowers; her face was soiled and scratched, her eyes looked wild. She made as rapid a toilet as she could, and then she started out. It was already almost dark, so long had been her dreary journey. She started to run.
Then she stopped. She might have been uncertain in the afternoon whether or not she had heard the sound of a gunshot, but now there was no mistaking. It seemed to her that the bullet passed immediately before her, that she heard its whistle. It said to her as distinctly as if a voice had spoken, “Stay where you are!”
She went back to the house. Only a fool would have gone on after that sort of warning. But she did not go indoors. She stood on the step and called.
“Come here and talk to me. I’ll listen to what you have to say! Don’t hide like a coward!”
But there was no answer. Perhaps when it was still darker they would come. She sat down in her corner of the step and leaned her head against the wall. She would be here if they came, she would—she would—her head nodded and she was asleep.
When she woke it was in answer to an abrupt summons. She heard simultaneously another shot and a little sharp crack and some object fell from above upon her head. She thought it was a fluttering bird and put up her hand. But the texture of the object was that of cloth. It was the flag which had been shot at! Elizabeth stood with it in her hands. Colonel Thomas had said that the mountaineers had been in sympathy with the enemies of their country. Was this generation traitorous also? Every fiber of her being stiffened with resentment. Yet, alas! John Baring—
Again she stood on the step and called angrily.
“Come and tell me what you want! Don’t hide like a coward!”
But whether the watcher was deaf, or whether he was merely a sentinel without power to act or to answer, he made no response.