"Nay, not so bad as that," whispered Andrew, "not so bad as that, pray God. Yet, courage, mon ami, there will soon be some coming this way. And if not, why I will carry you," and he set about undoing the other's back and breast piece so as to give him more freedom.
"I cannot move," the boy replied feebly. "I think I am dying. Oh! my mother."
"Nay, nay," repeated Andrew. "Nay. Heart up."
But still the young man's voice grew more and more feeble, and now he seemed wandering in his speech.
"I--I--meant to tell you much if I had lived. I must speak now. The--she--the woman we know of was----"
"What?" asked Andrew quickly, catching his breath. He knew, something told him, that the woman to whom the other referred could be one only--Marion Wyatt. "What was she?"
"She was--ah, God! Look there!" and, with a strange glance of agitation in his eyes, he glared towards the wood. Following that glance, Andrew saw what had so unnerved the other.
For, coming from out the wood, urging his horse to its greatest pace, though it was sadly blown, there rode swiftly De Bois-Vallée, hatless and the sling from his wounded arm hanging loose, while as he left the wood he was calling back orders to some whom doubtless he imagined were still there. And Andrew knew that, as one of Turenne's aides-de-camp, he had been sent out with instructions to the various scattered regiments.
At first he evidently recognized neither Debrasques nor Vause, and was going as swiftly by as he could, and as all the impediments of dead men and animals would permit, but as Andrew sprang to his feet, intent, not on renewing his feud with him at such a moment as this, but on summoning him to the assistance of his dying cousin, he saw him plainly in the now clear evening light. And, even as he observed who was before him, the Marquis, with his brain becoming evidently more and more disordered, shouted out in a voice that seemed to have acquired unnatural strength at this crisis--
"Traitor! scoundrel! I have told him all," and then sank back, either dead or senseless, against his horse's side.