It was a close shave, nevertheless. She was up an oak-tree, flattened against the trunk, when the pursuit went past, and there she stayed until the alarm died away in another direction. She would have stayed longer; but when the world turned to black mist and began to spin round her she slid down as fast as she could, and ended by rolling out of the lower branches. When she came to herself she was lying at the foot of the tree in a pool of blood, ten feet from a path, at the mercy of any chance wayfarer. Her arm had broken out bleeding again; she was parched with thirst and felt like death. It was thirst which at last spurred her to her feet, in the hope of finding water. And in that land of brooks and springs she did find it—a tiny runnel, tasting of the brown leaves through which it oozed, but water of life to Dorothea with the wound-thirst on her. She drank and drank, and laved her head and face and arms, and drank again, till the sky stood still, and the trees left off dancing jigs before her eyes.
But she had lost a good deal of blood; she was weak, and feverish, and muddle-headed; and in consequence she made a blunder. She ought now to have stripped off Denis's things, which had served their turn, and left them hidden. But she had got into her head that she was to take them back to the cave, and she had not wits enough to mend her plan; she could only carry out what was fixed before.
All that day, then, she toiled along, still in the character of the escaped avion. But the forests of the Semois are lonely; she met no one but a couple of children picking whortleberries, who dropped their cans and their dinner and fled, taking her for a German. Dorothea shuddered at the bread; she tried a few berries, but they made her sick. She could not eat that day, but she drank of every brook she came across. It was very hot, and Denis's coat and cap and leggings were made of leather and lined with fleece, and their dark color attracted an Egyptian plague of flies. Dorothea was far spent by the time she struck the familiar track through the pine wood.
She was so far spent that for some time she walked along the track itself, forgetting it was no place for her. It seemed too much trouble, too much, to stoop and crawl and hide among the bracken. When a bramble caught her sleeve she burst out crying. She missed her way and stumbled into the hidden dell from the wrong side, brushing waist-high through flowering willow-herb which streamed down the hill-side, rose-pink, almost lilac in intensity of color.
Oh! the coolness, the green twilight of the cave! Dorothea with a great sigh buried her face in icy crystal water. Oh! it was good! She lay for some time before she discovered that one reason why she had been feeling so queer was that her arm was bleeding again. She gave a twist to her bandage, but she was too tired to see to it properly—too tired even to get rid of her flying kit; a deadly lassitude weighed on every limb. By and by, when it was cooler, and darker, and the flies were less troublesome, she would slip off down to the farm.
"This is where he went," said an eager voice. "See how he has broken these pink weeds! And here is the blood again."
"Himmel! I have passed this tree ten times, and never have I seen this path! But what is become of him? He cannot have flown out of the place!"
Dorothea sat up; she was cold enough now. Oh! why had she not thought of the wood being still patrolled?
Steps came swishing through the long grass. Suddenly the cave grew lighter, and there was a startled exclamation. They had lifted the curtain of ivy. Both began to chatter at once, rapidly, excitedly. "I tell you, it is not safe, these caves are dangerous!" "Aber, if we fetch the Herr Lieutenant he will not give us the reward, we shall have to share with the rest!" Private Blum had a young lady in Germany, and he wanted all he could get. Dorothea could not follow all their talk, but she gathered to her joy that one was going off to fetch help while the other stayed on guard. Yes, he was certainly alone; she could hear him walking up and down and singing to himself—"Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten—" Now, with any luck—