‘You do not know the worst,’ Salvarini replied. ‘Come closer, and let me whisper in your ears; even the walls carry such tidings. The Supreme Director is here!’
Le Gautier turned faint and sick as he looked furtively round the room, with its long mirrors and barbaric splendour.
‘Suppose you lend me yours?’ he suggested. ‘You will not want it now. What a mad fool I have been! I wonder if there is any way of recovering it? for I must have it, come what will. With a penalty of’——
‘Death!’
The word, abruptly, sternly uttered, was followed by the same low mocking laugh they had heard before. They looked around in alarm, but no trace of any one could be seen. Standing in the recess of a window, they looked out; but no sign of the mysterious warning, so strangely given.
‘Let us get away from this,’ Le Gautier groaned. ‘I am stifled! Come outside into the open air. My nerves must be unstrung to-night.’
They walked out through the high folding-doors, and disappeared in the darkness. As they left, the woman who had been playing rose from her seat and followed them. Apparently, she was too late, for they had vanished; and with a sigh, she abandoned her evident intention, turning into the Kursaal gardens and throwing herself into a seat. Directly she quitted the saloon, the woman with the dark eyes followed, and tracked the other to the quiet retreat. For some time she stood behind the shadow of a tree, watching her. It was a brilliant moonlight night—clear, calm, and peaceful. Without there, the lighted windows of the gambling saloon could be seen; and ever and anon the murmur of the croupier, the scrape of the rakes, and the subdued clink of the gold, might be heard. But the figure on the seat did not heed these things; she was looking at a coin in her hand, making out as she best could the devices that it bore, strange and puzzling to her.
It was merely a gold coin, in fine a moidore of Portugal; and upon the reverse side, the figure had been rubbed down, and an emblem engraved in its place. There was a figure of Liberty gazing at a rising sun, her foot upon a prostrate dead body, and underneath the words, ‘I strike.’ Over the rising sun, in tiny letters, was the device, ‘In Freedom’s name;’ and at the top, two letters in a monogram. The seated figure noted these things, but, from the expression on her face, they represented nothing to her. Behind the shadow of the tree, the watcher crept closer and closer, trying in vain to get a glimpse of the golden coin. As the seated figure bent over it, tears began to gather in her eyes, overflowing at last, and the passion of sorrow seemed to rise, till her frame was shaken with the sobs she did not strive to master. The woman looking on stepped out from her shelter and crossed the open grass to the other’s side. Her face, on the contrary, was eager, almost hopeful, as she bent forward and touched the weeper on the shoulder. She looked up, surprise mastering her grief for a brief moment.
ARMY PANICS:
BY ONE WHO HAS BEEN IN THEM.
Few men have gone through a campaign of any duration without having experienced some one or more of those strange incidents of warfare which are known under the name of Panics. Those who have been in them know but too well their peculiarity—how a sudden access of fear seizing upon a body of troops, and communicating itself from man to man with a rapidity that can only be compared to a conflagration in a city built of wood, spreads so quickly that it is impossible to detect its cause, and the coolest observer cannot tell whence the contagion had its origin. Amongst raw levies or young and inexperienced soldiery, such panics are naturally more frequent than amongst tried troops; but history tells us that even the oldest veterans are not proof against their attack.