Sergeant Blick gently pinched the wound.
"Aye, is it! More fright than hurt! A barber's stitch of a silk thread. A bandage and salve! 'Tis all she needs."
Nigel looked up. The lady of the misty eyes looked down.
"She lives!" said he. "You have but to wash the wound, put in three stitches, lay salve upon it and a bandage of linen. She will not bleed to death this time."
The woman knelt down and did as she was bidden with deft long fingers and without a word.
Before the bandage was made secure the girl Elspeth opened her eyes and her gaze fell first upon Nigel. A red flush came to her cheek, perhaps because of her neck lying so uncovered before a man, perhaps by reason of other thoughts. And as the colour natural to her face, a healthy rosy hue, came back, Nigel on his part gave a little start of surprise and turned away. He wondered that he had not known her again. Yesterday she had worn a healthy ruddiness in her cheeks and a white dress upon her jolly plump form. To-day with the absolute pallor of her swoon and her sombre grey clothes his eyes had been cheated, or was it that his eyes had lost something of their natural sharpness in the duello with those others of the race of eagles?
The service rendered to her golden-haired friend, the snowy neck once more shrouded in its covering kerchief, the dark lady resumed her haughty aloofness. A flash had broken through the mists of her eyes, as a passing gleam of the moon breaks for an instant through fast scudding clouds, when she saw the recognition pass. Perhaps she wondered. Elspeth was of the burgher-class, well-to-do it might be, and she who looked was noble by every outward token, and might well disregard such affairs as brought a poor gentleman of the sword, and an outlander to boot, into contact with a burgher-maiden at the sack of Magdeburg.
Nigel Charteris was indifferent. He concerned himself as little with the thoughts of either girl. His present business was the gathering of booty. No man became soldier or officer in Tilly's army for his pay. Pay was a mighty uncertain thing. So was the sack of a town. So many were the avenues to perdition, or to salvation, according to one's views of the future state, and of one's own destination in it. A shot from a window, a tile from a roof, a stab in a dark corner, any of the three might "his quietus make." It was only common justice in the soldier's rough code that, when Dame Fortune came his way and opened a town's gates to him, he should fill his pockets, and any odd sack he could bear with him on his march. How should he pay Peter for the ultimate repose of his soul if not by relieving Paul of those riches that were an actual impediment to Paul's salvation?
Nigel took a brief survey of the room, and his eyes rested upon the motionless figure of the dead pastor, unreal-looking in posture and in face. He frowned and crossed himself.
The proud lady followed his glance.