Dalroy knew that
concentration was the prime essential of scout-craft.

Thus he was deaf to the distant thunder of guns, but alive to the least
rustle inside the building; blind to certain ominous gleams on the
horizon, but quick to detect any moving object close at hand. He made
out that a door stood open; so, after a few seconds' pause, he slipped
rapidly within, and stood near the wall on the side opposite the hinges.
An animal stirred uneasily, and the plaintive lowing ceased. He had
dropped the sabots long since, and the lamp was lost in the spill out of
the wagon, but most fortunately he had matches in his pocket. He closed
the door softly, struck a match, guarding the flame with both hands, and
looked round. He found himself in a ramshackle shed, half-barn,
half-stable. In a stall was tethered a black-and-white cow, her udder
distended with milk. Huddled up against the wall was the corpse of a
woman, an old peasant, whose wizened features had that waxen tint of
_camailleu gris_ with which, in their illuminated missals of the Middle
Ages, the monks loved to portray the sufferings of the early Christian
martyrs. She had been stabbed twice through the breast. An overturned
pail and milking-stool showed how and where death had surprised her.

The match flickered out, and Dalroy was left in the darkness of the
tomb. He had a second match in his hand, and was on the verge of
striking it when he heard a man's voice and the swish of feet through
the grass of the pasture without.

"This is the place, Heinrich," came the words in guttural German, and
breathlessly. Then, with certain foulnesses of expression, the speaker
added, "I'm puffed. That girl fought like a wild cat."

"She's pretty, too, for a Belgian," agreed another voice.

"So. But I couldn't put up with her screeching when you told her that a
bayonet had stopped her grandam's nagging tongue."

"_Ach, was!_ What matter, at eighty?"

Dalroy had pulled the door open. Stooping, he sought for and found the
milking-stool, a solid article of sound oak. Through a chink he saw two
dark forms; glints of the dawn on fixed bayonets showed that the men
were carrying their rifles slung. At the door the foremost switched on
an electric torch.

"You milk, Heinrich," he said, "while I show a glim."

He advanced a pace, as Dalroy expected he would, so the swing of the
stool caught him on the right side of the head, partly on the ear and
partly on the rim of his _Pickel