"Did they remain long?"
"For twenty minutes or so, but they saw that the thing was impossible and went away."
"The situation becomes interesting," said Goritz.
"Rather too risky, I should say," put in the other. "If the Herr Hauptmann had only taken my advice last week——"
"I never take advice. But you may have been mistaken. I can scarcely believe that Herr Windt had the skill to trace us here—unless——"
"But it was he. I was peering through the slit in the postern, not twenty feet away. I could have killed him easily."
"But twenty feet is a long distance when two hundred feet yawn beneath. Let him come. We have food enough for a siege—ah, there it is again!"
There was a significant silence between the two men, but Renwick listened the more keenly, for he heard the deep rumble, as of thunder, which had perplexed him in the afternoon—a reverberation, repeated and continued, which seemed to make the very flags beneath him tremble. But since he could hear and feel it within these solid walls, much nearer and louder, he realized now that it meant the roar of artillery—the defiant blasts of the Austrian guns at the end of the Pass, or the triumphant salvos of the Russians. And the voice of Goritz confirmed him.
"The thing has come rather sooner than I expected," he growled. "Donnerwetter! Why couldn't the Russians have put off the attack for a week!"
"And if they win the Pass——"