f
shots. The sentry and the prisoner stood facing each other, their lips
apart, listening.

The orchard at that instant awoke to sudden tumult. There were the thud
and scramble and scamper of feet, the mellow, swift clash of arms, men's
voices in question, oath, command, hurried and unhurried, resolute and
frantic. A horse sped along the road at a raging gallop. A loud voice
shouted, "What is it, Ferguson?" Another voice yelled something
incoherent. There was a sharp, discordant chorus of command. An
uproarious volley suddenly rang from the orchard. The prisoner in gray
moved from his intent, listening attitude. Instantly the eyes of the
sentry blazed, and he said with a new and terrible sternness, "Stand
where you are!"

The prisoner trembled in his excitement. Expressions of delight and
triumph bubbled to his lips. "A surprise, by Gawd! Now--now, you'll
see!"

The sentry stolidly swung his carbine to his shoulder. He sighted
carefully along the barrel until it pointed at the prisoner's head,
about at his nose. "Well, I've got you, anyhow. Remember that! Don't
move!"

The prisoner could not keep his arms from nervously gesturing. "I won't;
but----"

"And shut your mouth!"

The three comrades of the sentry flung themselves into view.
"Pete--devil of a row!--can you----"

"I've got him," said the sentry calmly and without moving. It was as if
the barrel of the carbine rested on piers of stone. The three comrades
turned and plunged into the darkness.

In the orchard it seemed as if two gigantic animals were engaged in a
mad, floundering encounter, snarling, howling in a whirling chaos of
noise and motion. In the barn the prisoner and his guard faced each
other in silence.

As for the girl at the knothole, the sky had fallen at the beginning of
this clamour. She would not have been astonished to see the stars
swinging from their abodes, and the vegetation, the barn, all blow away.
It was the end of everything, the grand universal murder. When two of
the three miraculous soldiers who formed the original feed-box corps
emerged in detail from the hole under the beam and slid away into the
darkness, she did no more than glance at them.

Suddenly she recollected the head with silver eyes. She started forward
and again applied her eyes to the knothole. Even with the din resounding
from the orchard, from up the road and down the road, from the heavens
and from the deep earth, the central fascination was this mystic