"How do you know," she demanded, "that he will keep his promise? He may not go back to his own army. He can be just as dead on my lawn as anywhere else!"
Lathrop shook his head at her sadly.
"How you wrong me!" he protested. "How dare you doubt the promise of a dying man? These are really my last words, and I wish I could think of something to say suited to the occasion, but the presence of strangers prevents."
He mounted his bicycle. "'If I had a thousand lives to give,'" he quoted with fervor, "'I'd give them all to—'" he hesitated, and smiled mournfully on Miss Farrar. Seeing her flushed and indignant countenance, he added, with haste, "to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts!"
As he started on his wheel slowly down the path, he turned to the sergeant.
"I'm escaping," he explained. The Reds, with an enthusiasm undoubtedly genuine, raised their rifles, and the calm of the Indian summer was shattered by two sharp reports. Lathrop, looking back over his shoulder, waved one hand reassuringly.
"Death was instantaneous," he called. He bent his body over the handle-bar, and they watched him disappear rapidly around the turn in the road.
Miss Farrar sighed with relief.
"Thank you very much," she said.
As though signifying that to oblige a woman he would shoot any number of prisoners, the sergeant raised his hat.