"My Sister..."
The nun addressed turned a pleasant face upon him, and cried, with a sympathetic clasping of her small, work-roughened hands:
"There is blood on Monsieur! ... He has been wounded."
P. C. Breagh explained with economy of words how and where he had been watching the fighting, and whence came the ugly stains upon his clothes. The nun glanced toward the wood, paled and shuddered, and said, making the sign of the Cross upon her starched, cape-like guimpe:
"But all cannot be dead who lie bleeding in that ravin—the hollow where our poor school-children gather primroses in Spring?"
"I think they must be. The massacre was carried out deliberately. Aimed fire—and there is not a movement, not a groan...."
P. C. Breagh shuddered, remembering the crossing of the red ditch. The nun said with energy, as other black habits and white guimpes came crowding round her:
"We must make sure.... Each of those bodies must be lifted and examined. Life often lingers, sir, when it seems to have fled. We learned that in the Crimea, when we worked in the base-hospitals of Kamiesch. What of these things?" P. C. Breagh was holding out the portrait, purse, pocketbook, and letters. "You wish our Reverend Mother to take charge of them? They belonged to that dead officer yonder, in the scarlet uniform? He was English, you tell me—and you, too, are of England? Very well! It shall be as you wish, Monsieur—I am free to decide, as I am the Superior of our community. But I will not receive the valuables at your hands until you have helped us to clear that terrible ravine. We have only our good priest with a few peasants and one surgeon, and some charitable ladies and gentlemen of the Association of the Red Cross. Everyone else is panic-stricken—they have barricaded themselves within their shops and houses, and taken refuge in the cellars.... The explosions of cannon have been so terrible—they are becoming yet more alarming, and when the fighting came quite close.... Our people are not brave, you think!—Still, everyone cannot be courageous.... But, Monsieur, who watches men being killed by guns to gain experience—we may look to Monsieur for help?"
The clear woman-eyes went to the sun-browned, freckled face of the young man in the travel-worn, dusty, blood-stained clothing, and realized that a struggle was going on within him. She said:
"If Monsieur is of necessity compelled to go and leave us, I will take charge of the dead English officer's property for Monsieur. But a great blessing is for those who succor the wounded. Our Lord has always promised this!"