"The thing is plain to me," gasped Rickerl, pointing to the smoke-cloud eddying above the vineyard—"a brigade or two of Frossard's corps have been cut off and hurled back towards Nancy. Their rear-guard is making a stand—that's all. Jack, what on earth did you get into such a terrible scrape for?"
Jack, panting full length in the shadow of the straw-stack, told Rickerl the whole wretched story, from the time of his leaving Forbach, after having sent the despatches to the Herald, up to the moment he had called to Rickerl there in the meadow, surrounded by Uhlans, a rope already choking him senseless.
Rickerl listened impassively, playing with the sabre on his knees, glancing right and left across the country with his restless baby-blue eyes. When Jack finished he said nothing, but it was plain enough how seriously he viewed the matter.
"As for your damned Uhlans," ended Jack, "I have tried to keep out of their way. It's a relief to me to know that I didn't kill that trooper; but—confound him!—he shot at me so enthusiastically that I thought it time to join the party myself. Ricky, would they have hanged me if they had given me a fair court-martial?"
"As a favour they might have shot you," replied Rickerl, gloomily.
"Then," said Jack, "there are two things left for me to do—go to Paris, which I can't unless Mademoiselle de Nesville goes, or join some franc-tireur corps and give the German army as good as they send. If you Uhlans think," he continued, violently, "that you're coming into France to hang and shoot and raise hell without getting hell in return, you're a pack of idiots!"
"The war is none of your affair," said Rickerl, flushing. "You brought it on yourself—this hanging business. Good heavens! the whole thing makes me sick! I can't believe that two weeks ago we were all there together at Morteyn—"
"A pretty return you're making for Morteyn hospitality!" blurted out Jack. Then, shocked at what he had said, he begged Rickerl's pardon and bitterly took himself to task.
"I am a fool, Ricky; I know you've got to follow your regiment, and I know it must cut you to the heart. Don't mind what I say; I'm so miserable and bewildered, and I haven't got the feeling of that rope off my neck yet."
Rickerl raised his hand gently, but his face was hard set.