"Half an hour!" The lad's tone rang with indignation. "Are you a man and will you leave a woman at their mercy?" He was white with rage and shaking. "Then I will go alone. I will go to their quarters--I, alone!" As he thought of the girl he loved and her terrors his heart was too big for his breast.
"And throw away another life?" the Bat replied sternly. "For shame!"
"For shame, I?"
"Ay, you! To call yourself a soldier and cry fie on orders!"
He would have added more, but he was forestalled by the Vicomte. In his high petulant tone he bade his son stand for a fool. "There are women here," he continued, sensibly enough, "and we are none too many to guard them, as we are."
"Ay, but she" Roger retorted, trembling, "is alone there."
"A truce to this!" the Bat struck in, with heat. "To your post, sir, and do your duty, or we are all lost together. Steady, men, steady!" as a slight movement of the troopers at the breastwork made itself felt rather than seen. "Pikes low! Pikes low! What is it?"
He saw then. The commotion was caused by the approach of a group of men, three or four in number, whose neighbourhood one of the lights had just betrayed. "Who comes there?" cried the leader of the Countess's troopers, who was in charge of that end of the line. "Are you friends?"
"Ay, ay! Friends!"
If so, they were timorous friends. For when they were bidden to advance to the spot where the Bat with the Vicomte and Roger awaited them, their alarm was plain. The foremost was the man who had spoken for the peasants at the debate some days before. But the smith's boldness and independence were gone; he was ashake with fear. "I have bad news," he stammered. "Bad news, my lords!"