“A White Nun?”
“God knows. She had some white rags hanging to her body, and dark hair clipped like a boy’s.”
“That––was––she!” said the soldier with slow conviction. He turned and looked down the long perspective of the forest road. Only a raven stalked there all alone over the fallen leaves.
“Certainly,” he said, “that was our White Nun. The Cossacks took her with them. They must have ridden fast, the horsemen of Kaledines.”
“Like a swift storm. Like the souls of the damned,” replied a peasant.
The soldier shrugged: “If there’s still a Romanoff xxxii loose in the world, God save the world!... And that big heifer of a Swedish wench!––she was a bad one, I tell you!––Took six of us to catch her and ten to hold her by her ten fingers and toes! Hey! God bless me, but she stands six feet and is made of steel cased in silk––all white, smooth and iron-hard––the blond young snow-tiger that she is!––the yellow-haired, six-foot, slippery beastess! God bless me––God bless me!” he muttered, staring down the wood-road to its vanishing point against the grey horizon.
Then he hitched his slung rifle to a more comfortable position, turned, gazed at the convent across the fields, which his distant comrades were now approaching.
“A German nest,” he said aloud to himself, “full of their damned Deaconesses! Hey! I’ll be going along to see what’s to be done with them, also!”
He nodded to the wood-cutters:
“Vermin-killing time,” he remarked cheerily. “After the dirty work is done, peace, land enough for everybody, ease and plenty and a full glass always at one’s elbows––eh, comrades?”