'You mistake, your excellency!' I cried, my voice shrill with excitement. 'In Heaven's name, stop! He is alive! I can feel his breathing. I swear that he is alive!' I was trembling with emotion and terror.
'He is dead!' he said harshly. 'Stand back!'
Then I understood. In a flash his wicked purpose lay bared before me, and I knew that he was playing with me; I read in the cold, derisive menace of his eye that he knew the Waldgrave lived, that he knew he might live, might survive, might see the dawn, and that he was resolved that he should not. The perspiration sprang out on my brow. I choked with indignation.
'Mein Gott!' I cried breathless, 'and but for him you would have been beaten.'
'Stand back!' he muttered through his closed teeth; and his eyes flickered with rage. 'Are you tired of your life, man?'
'Ay, if you live!' I roared; and I shook his rein so that his horse reared and almost unseated him. But still I clung to it. 'Come back! Come back!' I cried, mad with passion, wild with indignation at treachery so vile, so cold-blooded, 'or I will heave you from your horse, you villain! I will----'
I stumbled as I spoke over a broken shaft of a waggon, and in a moment half a dozen strong arms closed round me. I was down and up again and again down. I fought savagely, passionately, at the last desperately, having that cold, sneering face before me, and knowing that it was for my life. But they were many to one. They crushed me down and knelt on me, and presently I lay panting and quiet. One of the men who held me had unsheathed his dagger and stood looking to the general for a signal. I closed my eyes expecting the blow, and involuntarily drew in my breast, as if that poor effort might avert the stroke.
But the general did not give the signal. He sat gazing down at me with a ruthless smile on his face. 'Tie him up,' he said slowly, when he had enjoyed his triumph to the full. 'Tie him up tightly. When we get back to the camp we will have a shooting-match, and he shall find us sport. You knave!' he continued, riding up to me in a paroxysm of anger, and slashing me across the face with his riding-whip so cruelly that the flesh rose in great wheals, and I fell back into the men's arms blind and shuddering with pain, 'I have had my eye on you! But you will work me no more mischief. Throw him into the waggon there,' he continued. 'Tie up his mouth if he makes a noise. Has any one seen Ludwig?'