"But it is well that I came," he said, conversing with himself; "where better can I convince myself that the old pastor's curse was not unjust--and that what was not a sin, has become one?"
His eyes wandered over the row of flattened graves, and now there seemed no end to them.... How many were buried there? If they had been closely packed, a hundred or more might rest in each grave--or perhaps even double that number. And they had all been brave soldiers who had left their homes gaily, in light-hearted devotion to fight for King and Fatherland.... Through foulest treachery they had been butchered here in cold blood, under cover of night.
He clung to one of the crosses, and held his face so tightly against the rough wood that splints dug into his flesh.
"Arraign him before the whole world!" something cried within him--"him and her--and then go with her to perdition."
He gazed at the distant prospect, and sought the outline of the ruins against the horizon. But nothing was visible except the tall trees that crowned the park, which were only dimly discernible. A little behind to the right of them lay the Cats' Bridge.
He could fancy her emerging from those trees with the troop of remorselessly cruel Frenchmen following her, bent on their work of blood. How terrible must the regular echo of their marching feet have sounded in her ears. Deeper and deeper into the wood they must have gone, till they reached that ravine which ran parallel with the thicket, almost in a half-circle. She had never told him the road she had taken, but he saw exactly how it had all happened. Everything was as plain as if he had been there himself and seen it with his own eyes.
He stretched out his arm, and with a trembling finger traced the path against the horizon.
And afterwards when they let her go, and she had made her way home alone, with the wages of her sin in her pocket--how the cracking of bullets, the beating of drums, the clouds of gunpowder, the death-shrieks of the massacred, must have followed her, galloping at her heels like an army of furies!
How she had gone on living with those awful sounds ringing in her head, those ghastly pictures floating before her eyes, he could not understand. If he had been in her place he would have sought instant deliverance in the first halter or pond that came handy.
But not she! Visions were no terror to her. Her conscience, instead of tormenting itself, was apparently scarcely conscious of its guilt. She had only the feelings of an animal or a demon. He shuddered. And it was to her, her, that he had been on the brink of succumbing!