Schoolmaster Anderson in the mean time was at the head of four or five other pursuers, who had run from the tap-rooms. Before he reached the spot where the two leaders were gathering themselves together, he also tripped, and the two next fell over him. There was a general laugh, and by this time George had turned through the gateway into the lumber-yard. Here again he had to adapt himself to circumstances, for at the farther entrance was standing a group of soldiers throwing horseshoes at a peg in the frozen ground. He could not go out of that opposite gate without exciting suspicion. There were only two things left him to do; one to jump the fence to the left, or try to scale the high wall to the right. A glance at the latter decided matters. There was a clumsy-looking ladder leaning against the wall. He hastened up, and threw himself over the top, kicking the ladder from beneath him as he jumped. He came down in a little garden. He had doubled on his tracks, and could hear the pursuit going down the road behind him. Suddenly he glanced up at the small house; it bore a sign over the front door:
MADAME LUCILLA BONSALL,
DRESSMAKER.
ROBES ET MANTEAUX.
He tried the door, it was unlocked, and he stepped in without knocking. A strange-looking woman with a long face and pale blue eyes was sitting there. George knew her at a glance to be Luke Bonsall's mother. She looked up from her sewing.
"What means this?" she asked, in a deep, hollow voice.
"I am a friend of your son's in the army. I have a message—a message from him to you," said George, panting. "Take me where we can be alone, and I will tell you."
The woman got up and slipped the bolt into the door.
"A message from my son!" she repeated. "He is dead."
George started. There would be no necessity to break the news. "I have a letter here," he said, fumbling in his pocket, "How did you know he died, might I ask, madam? It is true, and I was sorry to bear the tidings."