"Ah!"
"How will you know when half an hour is past?"
The Bat raised his eyebrows. "I can guess it within two or three minutes," he said. "There is no hurry for a minute or two!"
"No hurry?" Roger retorted. "But the Countess--won't she be in peril?"
The Bat looked curiously at him. "For the matter of that," he said, "we are all in peril. And may-be we shall be in greater before the day is out. We must take the rough with the smooth, young sir. However--perhaps you would like to make one to fetch her?"
Roger blushed. "I will go," he said.
"Very good," the old soldier answered. "I don't know that it is against orders. For you, mademoiselle, I fear that I cannot satisfy you so easily. Were I to send you," he continued with a sly smile, "to escort my lord back----"
"Could you not go yourself?" Bonne interrupted, her face reflecting the brightest colours of Roger's blush.
"I, indeed? No, mademoiselle. Orders! Orders!"
They did not reply. By this time the dense grey mist, forerunner of heat, had risen and discovered the camp, which here and there stirred and awoke. The open ground about the rivulet, which formed a neutral space between the peasants' hovels and the quarters assigned to the Vicomte, still showed untenanted, though marred and poached by the trampling of a thousand feet. But about the fringe of the huts that, low and mean as the shops of some Oriental bazaar, clustered along the foot of the bank, figures yawned and stretched, gazed up at the morning, or passed bending under infants, to fetch water. Everywhere a rising hum told of renewed life. And behind the Vicomte's quarters the brisk jingle of bits and stirrups announced that the troopers were saddling.