I saw her eyes shine as she looked at him, and her mouth grow tender; and I told myself with exultation that the Waldgrave had done something more than rival Waska--he had scored the first hit in the fight, and that no light one. The general would be wise, if he looked to his guard; fortunate, if he did not look too late.
CHAPTER XV.
[THE DUEL CONTINUED.]
I fell to wondering, as we rode home, whether we should find all safe; for we had left Marie Wort and my lady's woman to keep house with two only of the men. From that, again, I strayed into thoughts of the chain, and of Marie herself, so that the very head of what happened when we reached the house escaped me. The first I knew of it, Fraulein Anna's horse backed suddenly into mine, and brought us all up short with a deal of jostling and plunging. When I looked forward to learn what was amiss, I saw a man lying on his face under my lady's horse, and so near it that the beast's feet were touching his head. The man was crying out something in a pitiful tone, and two or three of the general's officers who were riding abreast of me were swearing roundly, and there was great confusion.
General Tzerclas said something, but my lady overbore him. 'What is it?' I heard her cry. 'Get up, man, and speak. Don't lie there. What is it?'
The man rose to his knees, and cried out, 'Justice, justice, lady!' in a wild sort of way, adding something--which I could not understand, for he spoke in a vile patois--about a house. He was in a miserable plight, and looked scarcely human. His face was sallow, his eyes shone with famine, his shrunken limbs peered through mud-stained rags that only half covered him.
'Which is your house?' my lady asked gently. And when one of the officers who had ridden up abreast of her would have intervened, she raised her hand with a gesture there was no mistaking. 'Which is your house?' she repeated.
The man pointed to the one in which we had our quarters.
'What! That one?' my lady cried incredulously. 'Then what has brought you to this?' For the creature looked the veriest scarecrow that ever hung about a church-porch. His head and feet had no covering, his hair was foully matted. He was filthy, hideous, famine-stricken.
And desperate. For, half-cringing, half-defiant, he pointed his accusing finger at the general. 'He has! He and his army!; he cried. 'That house was mine. Those fields were mine. I had cattle, they have eaten them. I had wood, they have burned it. I had meat, they have taken it. I was rich, and I am this! I had, and I have not--only a wife and babes, and they are dying in a ditch. May the curse of God----'