"Don't call her," he said, distinctly; "I am dying."
Presently he withdrew his hand and turned his face to the wall.
For a long time Jack sat there, waiting. At last he spoke: "Sir Thorald?"
But Sir Thorald had been dead for an hour.
When Alixe entered Jack took her slim, childish hands and looked into her eyes. She understood and went to her dead, laying down her tired little head on the sheeted breast.
CHAPTER XXII
A DOOR IS LOCKED
Lorraine stood on the terrace beside the brass gatling-gun, both hands holding to Jack's arm, watching the soldiers stuffing the windows of the Château with mattresses, quilts, and bedding of all kinds.
A stream of engineers was issuing from the hallway, carrying tables, chairs, barrels, and chests to the garden below, where other soldiers picked them up and bore them across the lawn to the rear of the house.
"They are piling all the furniture they can get against the gate in the park wall," said Jack; "come out to the kitchen-garden."