Franz seized the girl’s arm. She knew it would be undignified to resist. Kissing Dalroy again, she whispered a last choking farewell, and suffered her guide to take her where he willed. She walked with stumbling feet. Her eyes were dimmed with tears; but, sustained by the pride of her race, she refused to sob, and bit her lower lip in dauntless resolve not to yield.
The rain was beating down now in heavy gusts. Von Halwig, if he had no concern for the comfort of the troopers, had a good deal for his own.
“Damn the weather!” he grunted. “Come into the bar. You can walk, I suppose?”
He turned on the torch, which was controlled by a sliding button, and saw how the prisoner was secured. Then he flashed the light into the interior of the barn. It was a ramshackle place at the best, and looked peculiarly forlorn after the rummaging it had undergone since the fight, a recent picket having evidently torn down stalls and mangers to provide materials for a fire. Part of a long sloping ladder had been consumed for that purpose, so that an open trap-door in the boarded floor of an upper storey was inaccessible. The barn itself was unusually lofty, running to a height of twenty feet or more. There were no windows. Some rats, tempted out already by the oats spilled from the horses’ nose-bags, scuttled away from the light. Through the trap-door the noise of the rain pounding on a shingle roof came with a curious hollowness.
Von Halwig did not extinguish the lamp, but tucked it under his left arm. He lighted a cigarette. With each movement of his body the beam of light shifted. Now it played on the wall, against which Dalroy leaned, because the cramped state of his arms was already becoming irksome; now it shone through the doorway, forming a sort of luminous blur in the rain, now it dwelt on the Englishman, standing there in his worn blouse, baggy breeches, and sabots, an old flannel shirt open at the neck, and a month’s growth of beard on cheeks and chin. The hat which Irene made fun of had been tilted at a rakish angle when the corporal removed the cloak. Certainly he was changed in essentials since he and the Guardsman last met face to face on the platform at Aix-la-Chapelle.
But the eyes were unalterable. They were still resolute, and strangely calm, because he had nerved himself not to flinch before this strutting popinjay.
“You wonder why I have brought you in here, eh?” began Von Halwig, in English.
“Perhaps to gloat over me,” was the quiet reply.
“No. Is it necessary? At Aix I was excited. The Day had come. The Day of which we Germans have dreamed for many a year. I am young, but I have already won promotion. I belong to an irresistible army. War steadies a man. But when we reach Oombergen you will be paraded before a crusty old General, and even I, Von Halwig of the staff, and a friend of the Emperor, may not converse with a spy and a murderer. So we shall have a little chat now. What say you?”
“It all depends what you wish to talk about.”