"No, dog of a Prussian!"
A revolver cracked, and the speaker, a Voltigeur, was silent. His voice had sounded like that of an old man, but he wore the epaulettes of a lieutenant and had carroty-red hair. At this juncture, being overtaken by grievous retching and vomiting, P. C. Breagh's observations ceased.
He sat up presently and wiped his dripping neck and mopped his forehead. It seemed to him that he had seen the whole French Army exterminated, and yet he had witnessed but a skirmish ending in a battue. He shook his wits into some order, and controlled the shuddering that took him in the pit of the stomach, when he remembered that in common decency he must go to Brotherton.
The descent from the rock-platform was nothing more than a risky scramble. There were plenty of pine and furze roots and jutting stones for holding to and clefts into which to thrust one's toes. But the crossing of that ravine cumbered with bloody corpses was not effected without revolt of body and soul. He slipped once and fell, and struggled up all horribly besmeared and sick and shaking. For the teeth of a head from which the face had been shot away had snapped close by his ear. Then came the negotiation of the bit of woodland. Here were more Voltigeurs and Chasseurs à pied dead and horribly mutilated, and the wreck of a mitrailleuse, with two of its gunners. Some of these poor wounded creatures were living, and moaned for water.
"My God!—my God! how I suffer!" one feeble voice kept crying.
Help was coming, for from the direction of the town some carts were being driven, one by a stout priest in cassock and broad-brimmed hat, others by men with Red Cross armlets. Black-habited, white-capped Sisters of Mercy were in these vehicles, with baskets, and pitchers, and pails.
Seven dead Hussars showing hideously the effect of mitrailleuse-fire,—a troop-horse or two, and a White Cuirassier shot through the body and swearing horribly in Low German, were the fruits of the French enfilade. The fine gray charger had ceased careering; it grazed peaceably on the short herbage by the track that led over the common. But Chris Brotherton would never sit in saddle again.
P. C. Breagh turned him gently over and opened the gold-laced scarlet tunic. There was no blood upon it, only clean dust, nor was the dead man bruised or cut, having fallen where it was grassy. Upon the broad breast, under the white cambric shirt, was an oval miniature, pearl-set, of a pretty woman. The handsome mouth of the wearer smiled under the drooping fair mustache, and his blue eyes stared glassily. A bluish hole in the right temple and a bloody clot amid the hair upon the left side showed where the chassepot bullet had traversed the brain.
He had been high-handed, arrogant, and domineering, yet the Doctor and the horsey Towers had seemed to love him. No doubt that woman in the miniature had held Chris Brotherton dear.... P. C. Breagh would have left her fair face lying on the yet warm breast of her lover, but something he saw going on among the casualties upon the edge of the wood caused him to change his mind.
That gaunt-eyed, greedy-fingered creature in the peasant's blouse and Red Cross brassard, who glided from body to body, rifling pockets, should not plunder the Doctor's friend. With this determination, Carolan took away the portrait, a packet of letters, and Brotherton's watch and purse and pocketbook, then went forward to meet the Sisters, just descending from the foremost of the string of peasants' carts; and began: