One of the two men who rode in front, and served for the advanced guard of our party, came galloping back with his hand raised and a grin on his dark face. He pulled up his horse a few paces short of General Tzerclas and my lady, and reported that he had found the Saxon.
'What! Heller?' the general exclaimed. 'Here, Ludwig! Where are you?'
Ludwig, and I, and two or three more, spurred forward, and passing by my lady, who reined in her horse, came a hundred paces farther on upon the other trooper. He had dismounted and was stooping over a man's body, which lay under a great tree that stood a few yards from the track.
'So, so? He is dead, is he?' the captain cried, leaping from his saddle.
'Ay, this hour or more,' the trooper answered with a grunt. 'And robbed!'
'Robbed?' Ludwig shrieked. 'Then you have done it, you scoundrel.'
'Not I!' the fellow said coolly. 'Who ever it was killed him, robbed him. You can see for yourself that he has been dead an hour or more.'
The sudden hope which had dawned in my breast sank again. The man lay on his back, with his one eye staring, and his mean, livid face turned up to the tree and the sunshine. His cap had fallen off, and a shock of hay-coloured hair added to the horror of his appearance. I tried in vain to hide a qualm as I watched the soldiers passing their practised hands over his clothes; but I was alone in this. No one else seemed to feel any emotion. The dead man lay and his comrades searched him, and I heard a hundred ribald and loose things said, but not one that smacked of pity or regret. So the man had lived, without love or mercy, and so he died.
Ludwig stood up at last. 'He has not the worth of his boots upon him!' he said, with a savage snarl. And he kicked the body.
'Look in his cap!' I said.