roll of the
drums was renewed in the distance. The retreat had begun.

Mercy drew aside the canvas, and saw the badly wounded men, left
helpless at the mercy of the enemy, on their straw beds. She refused the
offer of Monsieur Surville's arm.

"I have already told you that I shall stay here," she answered.

Monsieur Surville lifted his hands in polite remonstrance. Mercy held
back the curtain, and pointed to the cottage door.

"Go," she said. "My mind is made up."

Even at that final moment the Frenchman asserted himself. He made his
exit with unimpaired grace and dignity. "Madam," he said, "you are
sublime!" With that parting compliment the man of gallantry--true to the
last to his admiration of the sex--bowed, with his hand on his heart,
and left the cottage.

Mercy dropped the canvas over the doorway. She was alone with the dead
woman.

The last tramp of footsteps, the last rumbling of the wagon wheels, died
away in the distance. No renewal of firing from the position occupied by
the enemy disturbed the silence that followed. The Germans knew that
the French were in retreat. A few minutes more and they would take
possession of the abandoned village: the tumult of their approach
should become audible at the cottage. In the meantime the stillness was
terrible. Even the wounded wretches who were left in the kitchen waited
their fate in silence.

Alone in the room, Mercy's first look was directed to the bed.

The two women had met in the confusion of the first skirmish at the
close of twilight. Separated, on their arrival at the cottage, by the
duties required of the nurse, they had only met again in the captain's
room. The acquaintance between them had been a short one; and it had
given no promise of ripening into friendship. But the fatal accident
had roused Mercy's interest in the stranger. She took the candle, and
approached the corpse of the woman who had been literally killed at her
side.

She stood by the bed, looking down in the silence of the night at the
stillness of the dead face.

It was a striking face--once seen (in life or in death) not to be
forgotten afterward. The forehead was unusually low and broad; the eyes
unusually far apart; the mouth and chin remarkably small. With tender
hands Mercy smoothed the disheveled hair and arranged the crumpled
dress. "Not five minutes since," she thought to herself, "I was longing
to change places with _you!_" She turned from the bed with a sigh. "I
wish