a light!" shouted Corporal Bates. "Ah! there
you are, sir! I meant to make sure of _this_ chap. I got him straight
off."

The torch revealed Corporal Franz stretched on his back, and frothing
blood, Bates's bayonet having pierced his lungs. It were better for the
shrewd Berliner if his wits had been duller and his mind cleaner. Not
soldierly zeal but a gross animalism led him in the first instance to
make a really important arrest. His ghoulish intent was requited now in
full measure, and the life wheezed out of him speedily as he lay there
quivering in the gloom and mire of that rain-swept woodland road.
Seldom, even when successfully ambushed, has any small detachment of
troops been destroyed so quickly and thoroughly. This killing was almost
an artistic triumph.

"Fall in!" growled Bates. "Any casualties?"

"If there is, the blighters oughter be court-mawshalled," chirped Smith.

A momentary shuffling of grotesque forms, and a deep voice boomed,
"Half-time score--England twenty, Germany _nil_."

"Left section--look 'em over, and carry any wounded men likely to
live into the barn," said the corporal. "Give 'em first aid an'
water-bottles. Step lively too! Right section--hold the horses."

This leader and his men were as skilled in the business of slaying an
enemy as Robin Hood and his band of poachers in the taking of the king's
venison. Dalroy knew they needed no guidance from him. He opened the
door of the car.

"Irene!" he said.

She was sitting there, a forlorn figure huddled up in a corner. The
windows were closed. Each sheet of glass was so blurred by the swirling
rain that she could not possibly make out the actual cause of the
external hubbub. After the hard schooling of the past month she
realised, of course, that a rescue was being attempted. Naturally, too,
she put it down to the escape of Maertz. Although her heart was
thrumming wildly, her soul on fire with a hope almost dangerous in its
frenzy, she resolved not to stir from her prison until the one man she
longed to see again in this world came to free her.

Yet when she heard his voice the tension snapped so suddenly that there
was peril in the other extreme. She sat so still that Dalroy said a
second time, with a curious sharpness of tone, "Irene!"

"Yes, dear," she contrived to murmur hoarsely.

"It's all over. A squad of British soldiers dropped from the skies.
Every German is laid out, Von Halwig with the rest."

"Von Halwig! Is he de