Several times she noticed, across the path, groups of small pebbles arranged in circles, or cut-off twigs, which were to her so much information furnished by Saint-Quentin. From them she learnt that the children instead of keeping straight along the path to the gorge, had turned off to the left and gone round the marsh to the seashore so betaking themselves to the shelter of the rocks. But she paid no attention to this maneuver, for she could only think of the danger which threatened Montfaucon and had no other aim than to get to his kidnapers.
She took her way to the peninsula, mounted the gorge, where she met no one, and reached the plateau. As she did so she heard the sound of a second report. Some one had fired in the ruins. At whom? At Maître Delarue? At one of the three young men?
"Ah," she said to herself anxiously. "Perhaps I ought never to have left them, those three friends of mine. All four of us together, we could have defended ourselves. Instead of that, we are far from one another, helpless."
What astonished her when she had crossed the outer wall, was the infinite silence into which she seemed to herself to enter. The field of battle was not large—a couple of miles long, at the most, and a few hundred yards across; and yet in this restricted space, in which perhaps nine or ten men were pitted against her, not a sound. Not a mutter of human speech. Nothing but the twittering of birds or the rustling of leaves, which fell gently, cautiously, as if things themselves were conspiring not to break the silence.
"It's terrible," murmured Dorothy. "What is the meaning of it? Am I to believe that all is over? Or rather that nothing has begun, that the adversaries are watching one another before coming to blows—on the one side Errington, Webster, and Dario, on the other d'Estreicher and his confederates?"
She advanced quickly into the court of the clock. There she saw still, near the two tied-up horses, the donkey, eating the leaves of a shrub, his bridle dragging on the ground, his saddle quite straight on his back, his coat shining with sweat.
What has become of Maître Delarue? Had he been able to rejoin the group of the foreigners? Had his mount thrown him and delivered him into the power of the enemy?
Thus at every moment questions presented themselves which it was impossible to answer. The shadow was thickening.
Dorothy was not timid. During the war, in the ambulances in the first line, she had grown used more quickly than many men to the bursting of shells; and the hour of bombardment did not shake her nerves. But mistress of her nerves as she was, on the other hand, she was more susceptible than a man of less courage to the influence of everything unknown, of everything that is unseen and unheard. Her extreme sensitiveness gave her a keen sense of danger; and at that moment she had the deepest impression of danger.
She went on however. An invincible force drove her on till she should find her friends and Montfaucon should be freed. She hurried to the avenue of great trees, crossed the clearing of the old solitary oak, and mounted the rising ground on which rose Cocquesin tower.