"Why, it's Lieutenant Treves!"
"What's he doing out of uniform?"
"I don't know," answered Nobby. "It's him right enough. Look again."
"He looks as if he'd had the fright of his life—I've never seen him look like that."
"Nor me, neither," answered Nobby, eyeing the figure hurrying towards Cherriton's door.
Both men watched the visitor disappear into the cottage, then discussed the matter in low tones. There was something that puzzled them about Treves's visit to Captain Cherriton—there was something that to Sergeant Watson's intelligent mind seemed altogether wrong about that visit, and yet he could not tell what.
Cherriton had been at the back window of his cottage peering out since the heavy gunfire began, and a look of triumph animated his pallid, hollow-cheeked countenance. He was startled at length by a low, feverish rapping at the cottage door. He paused a moment in thought before answering, then shifted a Mauser pistol from his hip pocket to the left hand pocket of his coat. He was a left-handed man, a fact which at certain moments of crisis was apt to redound to his advantage. With a due amount of caution he drew open the door, and the man from the threshold strode in upon him.
As Cherriton's eyes fell upon the stranger in the candle light the lines of his mouth altered.
"Why, it's you, Treves—this is a surprise!" he exclaimed. He gripped the young man's hand and drew him forward into the room.
Bernard Treves, pale, haggard, swept the room with his restless glance. His likeness to John Manton was striking even now.