But Phil’s hostess had not let him go away empty-handed.
“You’ll want something to eat by and by,” she said, and then the little fellow looked at her wonderingly, her parting word sounded to his English ears so strange, for she said “adieu” and not “good-bye.”
“Walk fast, boy,” said the Doctor, almost harshly; “we must rest by and by.”
They hurried on for quite two hours, and then, hot and weary, the old man suffering as hardly as the boy, they slackened their pace, and once more making for a patch of woodland, rested for a while in the shade. But not for long.
“I can’t hear the guns now,” whispered Phil, after a long silence.
“No,” said the Doctor, “I have not heard a sound for quite half-an-hour.”
“But where are we going now?”
The Doctor smiled sadly and shook his head.
“Where fate leads us, Phil,” he said; “anywhere to be out of this terrible work.”
He had hardly spoken before the crash of many guns made them start to their feet, Phil beginning to run out in the open in his sudden alarm, but only to turn back directly and catch at the Doctor’s hand.