Never had Cartoner's silent habit stood him in such good stead as during the following moments, while a skilled workman replaced the lost shoe. Never had he observed so skilled a silence, or left unsaid such dangerous words. For Kosmaroff watched him as a cat may watch a bird. Behind, were the barred gates, and in front, the semicircle of men, whose faces he could not see, while the full light glared through the open doorway upon his own countenance. Two miles from Warsaw—a dark autumn night, and eleven men to one. He counted them, in a mechanical way, as persons in face of death nearly always do count, with a cold deliberation, their chances of life. He played his miserable little cards with all the skill he possessed, and his knowledge of the racial characteristics of humanity served him. For he acted slowly, and gave his enemies leisure to see that it would be a mistake to kill him. They would see it in time; for they were not Frenchmen, nor of any other Celtic race, who would have killed him first and recognized their mistake afterwards. They were Slavs—of the most calculating race the world had produced—a little slow in their calculations. So he gave them time, just as Russia must have time; but she will reach the summit eventually, when her farsighted policy is fully evolved—long, long after reader and writer are dust.
Cartoner gave the workman half a rouble, which was accepted with a muttered word of thanks, and then he turned towards the great doors, which were barred. There was another pause, while the gate-keeper looked inquiringly at Kosmaroff.
“I am very much obliged to you,” said Cartoner to Martin, who went towards the gate as if to draw back the bolt. But at a signal from Kosmaroff the gate-keeper sprang forward and opened the heavy doors.
Martin was nearest, and instinctively held the stirrup, while Cartoner climbed into the saddle.
“Saved your life!” he said, in a whisper.
“I know,” answered Cartoner, turning in his saddle to lift his hat to the men grouped behind him. He looked over their heads into the open doorway, but could see nothing. Nevertheless, he knew where were concealed the arms brought out into the North Sea by Captain Cable in the Minnie.
“More than I bargained for,” he muttered to himself, as he rode away from the iron-foundry by the river. He put his horse to a trot and presently to a canter along the deserted, dusty road. The animal was astonishingly fresh and went off at a good pace, so that the man sent by Kosmaroff to follow him was soon breathless and forced to give up the chase.
Approaching the town, Cartoner rode at a more leisurely pace. That his life had hung on a thread since sunset did not seem to affect him much, and he looked about him with quiet eyes, while the hand on the bridle was steady.
He was, it seemed, one of those fortunate wayfarers who see their road clearly before them, and for whom the barriers of duty and honor, which stand on either side of every man's path, present neither gap nor gate. He had courage and patience, and was content to exercise both, without weighing the changes of reward too carefully. That he read his duty in a different sense to that understood by other men was no doubt only that which this tolerant age calls a matter of temperament.
“That Cartoner,” Deulin was in the habit of saying, “takes certain things so seriously, and other things—social things, to which I give most careful attention—he ignores. And yet we often reach the same end by different routes.”