'We are going thither,' I answered.
'You were!' he replied; and the meaning in his voice gave me a start. 'You were, I say?' he continued strenuously. 'Whither you are going now will depend, unless you exert yourself and are careful, on General John Tzerclas of the Saxon service. You visit his camp to-morrow. Take a hint. Get your mistress out of it and inside the walls of Cassel as soon as you can.'
'Why?' I said stubbornly. 'Why?' For it seemed to me that I was being asked all and told nothing. The man's vague warnings chimed in with my own fears, and yet I resented them coming from a stranger. I tried to pierce the darkness, to read his face, to solve the mystery of his altered tone. But the night baffled me; I could see nothing save a tall, dark form, and I fell back upon words and obstruction. 'Why?' I asked jealously. 'He is my lady's cousin.'
'After a fashion,' the stranger rejoined coldly and slowly, and not at all as if he meant to argue with me. 'I should be better content, man, if he were her uncle. However, I have said enough. Do you bear it in mind, and as you are faithful, be wary. So much for that. And now,' he continued, in a different tone, a tone in which a note of anxiety lurked whether he would or no, 'I have a question to ask on my own account, friend. Have you heard at any time within the last twelve months of a lost child being picked up to the north of this, in Heritzburg or the neighbourhood?'
'A lost child?' I repeated in astonishment.
'Yes!' he retorted impatiently. And I felt, though I could not see, that he was peering at me as I had lately peered at him. 'Isn't that plain German? A lost child, man? There is nothing hard to understand in it. Such a thing has been heard of before--and found, I suppose. A little boy, two years old.'
'No,' I said, 'I have heard nothing of one. A child two years old? Why, it could not go alone; it could not walk!'
In the darkness, which is a wonderful sharpener of ears, I heard the man move hastily. 'No,' he said with a stern note in his voice, 'I suppose not; I suppose it could not. At any rate, you have not heard of it?'
'No,' I said, 'certainly not.'
'If it had been found Heritzburg way,' he continued jealously, 'you would have, I suppose?'