"Your doing?"
"Mine. I was called in, to find Miss Mildare breaking down from suspense, and the overstrain of inaction. And—to avert even worse evils, I prescribed the tonic of danger. There was no choice—— In at last!"
The Sister of Mercy and the girl had vanished behind the dumpy earth-bag walls. He thought the white figure had glanced back, and waved its hand, and then a question from his companion startled him beyond his ordinary stolid self-control.
"By the way ... with reference to Miss Mildare, have you any idea whether she proposes taking the veil?"
"How should I have ideas upon the possibility?" The opaque, smooth skin of the square, pale face was dyed with a sudden rush of dark blood. The Colonel did not look at it, but said, as a bullet sang upon a stone near his boot, and flattened into a shiny star of lead:
"I would give something to hear you laugh sometimes, Saxham. You're too much in earnest, my dear fellow. Burnt Njal himself could hardly have been more grim."
Saxham answered:
"That fellow in the Saga, you mean. He laughed only at the end, I think, when the great roof-beam burned through and the hall fell in. But my castle tumbled about my ears in the beginning, and I laughed then, I remember."
"And, take it from me, you will live to laugh again and again," said the kindly voice, "at the man who took it for granted that everything was over, and did not set to work by dawn of the next day building up the hall greater than before. Those old Vikings did, 'and each time the high seat was dight more splendidly, and the hangings of the closed beds woven more fair.' They never knew when they were beaten, those grand old fellows, and so it came about that they never were. By the way, I have something here that concerns you."
"Concerns me?"