experience, they
shoved it off before it came to rest. Another, a longer one, and
another, both of which found lodgment squarely between the gate posts.
Renwick sprang to the loophole; but the volley that followed spattered
harmlessly around him.

He was a good shot with a rifle, and aimed deliberately, dropping the
first man that put his foot on the hazardous bridge. Gasping with her
exertions Marishka pushed the shorter timber over, but the longer one
jammed hopelessly against the gate post.

"Hugh," she cried, "we are lost."

But a strange thing happened then. For as the second man approached the
bridge and had even put one foot upon it, a shrill call rang out at the
other end of the causeway.

"The retreat!" the officer shouted. "To the rear----"

The look of relief upon the face of the brave fellow who was venturing
death upon the precarious timber was reflected in Renwick's own heart,
for he spared the man who, with a startled glance over his shoulder,
presently caught up with the rapidly vanishing Windt. Renwick rushed out
and lifting the dangerous timber hurled it down into the gorge.

Then he caught Marishka by the waist and lifted her.

"We're safe, dear--they've gone----" he cried.

She turned one look up at him and then, slowly closing her eyes, sank
back helpless in his arms.

"Marishka! It has been too much----"

The blood flowed from a slight cut upon her cheek where she had been
struck by a piece of flying stone, but he saw that it was not deep. He
laid her gently upon the flagging, and ran to the Hall for water. There
he found Ena, crouched in a corner, more dead than alive. But he
commanded her to come and bring water and brandy, and she obeyed.

Marishka had only fainted and the brandy soon restored her.

"They've gone?" she asked of him.

"Yes, dear. We're quite safe. Listen. The Russians are driving them down
the valley."

He washed the wound in her cheek tenderly.

"It will not scar you, Marishka," he smiled. "But if it does--an
honorable scar such as no woman of Austria wears."

She touched it with her fingers and smiled.

"I did not even know----"

And then she saw the blood at his shoulder.

"You're hurt?"

"Only a scratch. It's nothing."

But weak as she was she tore away the sleeve of his shirt, and made him
bathe and bind it with linen from her skirt.

"Will the Russians come here, you think?" she asked.

He smiled.

"If they don't come to us," he said soberly,