For forty-eight hours the battle seemed to have stood still. The two armies, like two stags, had locked horns and neither seemed to be able to push the other aside.
The raw wind that swept across the hospital yard had driven everybody but the sentinels indoors. And none of them was stationed near the door of Ward Three. The night orderly came in yawning. As there were no serious cases at present in this hut there was no regular night nurse assigned.
"That fellow will be asleep and snoring in half an hour," Belinda thought. "However, there is Jacob, who may be awakened."
She stepped out and was about to hurry to the nurses' quarters when something moving in the shadow of the hut startled her. Was it the outline of a human figure, or——
"Erard!" she called in a low voice.
"Oui, Mademoiselle!" responded the infirmier.
"What is that?" she demanded. "What did you roll under the porch?"
"Sst! Mademoiselle will forget?" he begged, coming closer. "It is perhaps the blanket-roll you mean—and it may yet be of use——"
An approaching step was heard.
"Good-night, Mademoiselle," Erard said clearly. "I am due at the guardhouse—and a plank bed. Good-night."