'Under the sky! In the ditch!' she answered passionately. 'Are you blind?' she continued, speaking more quietly and drawing nearer. 'Do you think your general built this village? If not, where are the people who lived in it a month ago? Whining for a crust at the camp gate. Living on offal, or starving. Fighting with the dogs for bones. I heard a man outside this house cry that it was all his, and that he was starving. You drove him off. I heard his wife and babes wailing outside a while ago, and I came out. I could not bear it.'
I looked at Jacob. He nodded gravely. 'There was a woman here, with a child,' he said.
'Heaven forgive us!' I cried. Then--'Go in, girl,' I continued. 'I will see the food put where they will get it; but do you go to bed.'
She obeyed meekly, leaving me wondering at the strange mixture of courage and fearfulness which makes up some women, and those the best; who fly from a rat, yet face every extremity of pain without flinching. A Romanist? And what of that? It seemed to me a small thing, as I watched her gliding in. If she knew little and that awry, she loved much.
I looked at Jacob and he at me. 'Is it true, do you think?' I said.
'I doubt it is,' he answered stolidly, dropping the smouldering brand on the ground and treading, it out with his heel. 'I have seen soldiers and sutlers and women since I came into camp; and beggars. But peasants not one. I doubt we have eaten them out, Master Martin. But soldiers must live.'
The little heap of red embers glowed dully in the road and gave no light. The darkness shut us in on every side, even as the camp shut us in. I looked out into it and shuddered. It seemed to my eyes peopled with horrors: with gaping mouths that cursed us as they set in death, with lean hands that threatened us, and tortured faces of maids and children; with the despair of the poor. Ghosts of starving men and women glared at us out of spectral eyes. And the night seemed full of omens.
CHAPTER XIV.
[THE OPENING OF A DUEL.]
I never knew where the Waldgrave spent that night, but I think it must have been with the fairies. For when he showed himself early next morning, before my lady appeared, I noticed at once a change in him; and though at first I was at a loss to explain it, I presently saw that that had happened which might have been expected. The appearance of a rival had laid the spark to his heart, and while the love-light was in his eyes, a new gravity, a new gentleness added grace to his bearing. The temper and pettiness of yesterday were gone. Other things, too, I saw--that his face flushed when my lady's voice was heard at the door, that his eyes shone when she entered. He had a nosegay of flowers for her--wild flowers he had gathered in the early morning, with the dew upon them--which he offered her with a little touch of humility.