THE RESCUE
The white signal had gone, but Ellerey's eyes remained fixed upon the moving black line until a fold in the hills hid it from sight. Something seemed to have gone out of his life, suddenly as a candle is blown out in a room. Then he turned and held out the paper to the soldier.
Stefan read the pencilled lines, turned the paper over meditatively, and then read them again. The words seemed to burn their way into his brain as they had burnt into Ellerey's, but the effect was somewhat different.
"It is not like a woman, is it?" said Stefan.
"Very like, I think."
Stefan shook his head, as though he regretted his companion's ignorance.
"I took a liking to Grigosie," he said. "I saw the making of a grand comrade in Grigosie. I can understand his doing this kind of thing, but not a woman."
"The fact remains that she is a woman," said Ellerey.
"Wonderful," answered the soldier, as he handed back the paper. "It would appear that the making of a man rests much in his clothes. I've never known good come from a petticoat. Grigosie didn't wear one. Maybe he recognized that he was a man, hidden by a cruel mistake in the shape of a woman. Ah, Captain, women have had the spoiling of many a good man I've drunk with and fought beside. I wish you a better fate than theirs."
"This does not look like treachery," said Ellerey. It was evident that he had not been attending to his companion, but had been following out a train of thought of his own, and now put his decision into words.