escort, wanted no more unpleasant
surprises that evening. Ostensibly, of course, he was anxious to report
to a brigade headquarters at Huy. At any rate, the Uhlans swept on.

They were gone when Dalroy regained his feet. A riderless horse was
clattering after them; another with a broken leg was vainly trying to
rise. Close at hand lay two Uhlans, one dead and one insensible. Joos
and Leontine were bending over the dying woman in the cart, making
frantic efforts to stanch the blood welling forth from mouth and breast.
The lance had pierced her lungs, but she was conscious for a minute or
so, and actually smiled the farewell she could not utter.

Maertz was swearing horribly, with the incoherence of a man just
aroused from drunken sleep. Irene moved a few steps to meet Dalroy. Her
face was marble white, her eyes strangely dilated.

"Are you hurt?" she asked.

"No. And you?"

"Untouched, thanks to you. But those brutes have killed poor Madame
Joos!"

The wounded Uhlan was stretched between them. He stirred convulsively,
and groaned. Dalroy looked at the sword which he still held. He resisted
a great temptation, and sprang over the prostrate body. He was about to
say something when a ghastly object staggered past. It was the man who
received the sabre-cut, which had gashed his shoulder deeply.

"_Oh, mon Dieu!_" he screamed. "_Oh, mon Dieu!_"

He may have been making for some burrow. They never knew. He wailed that
frenzied appeal as he shambled on--always the same words. He could think
of nothing else but the last cry of despairing humanity to the
All-Powerful.

Owing to the flight of the cavalry, Dalroy imagined that some body of
allied troops, Belgian or French, was advancing from Namur, so he did
not obey his first impulse, which was to enter the nearest house and
endeavour to get away through the gardens or other enclosures in rear.

He glanced at the hapless body on the cart, and saw by the eyes that
life had departed. Leontine was sobbing pitifully. Maertz, having
recovered his senses, was striving to calm her. But Joos remained
silent; he held his wife's limp hand, and it was as though he awaited
some reassuring clasp which should tell him that she still lived.

Dalroy had no words to console the bereaved old man. He turned aside,
and a mist obscured his vision for a little while. Then he heard the
wounded German hiccoughing, and he looked again at the sword, because
this was the assassin who had foull