ly, and hurried them from the house.

"Go that way!" she said, pointing towards where the sky looked light and
clear, for away behind the house clouds were rising like to those in a
storm; but they were clouds of smoke slowly gathering above a city miles
away, and the gloom increased.

But Phil's hostess had not let him go away empty-handed.

"You'll want something to eat by and by," she said, and then the little
fellow looked at her wonderingly, her parting word sounded to his
English ears so strange, for she said "adieu" and not "good-bye."

"Walk fast, boy," said the Doctor, almost harshly; "we must rest by and
by."

They hurried on for quite two hours, and then, hot and weary, the old
man suffering as hardly as the boy, they slackened their pace, and once
more making for a patch of woodland, rested for a while in the shade.
But not for long.

"I can't hear the guns now," whispered Phil, after a long silence.

"No," said the Doctor, "I have not heard a sound for quite
half-an-hour."

"But where are we going now?"

The Doctor smiled sadly and shook his head.

"Where fate leads us, Phil," he said; "anywhere to be out of this
terrible work."

He had hardly spoken before the crash of many guns made them start to
their feet, Phil beginning to run out in the open in his sudden alarm,
but only to turn back directly and catch at the Doctor's hand.

"Ah!" cried the old man, drawing him in amongst the trees; "that was
running into fresh danger. Look!"

Phil was already looking at a line of men who seemed to have suddenly
started out of the ground a hundred yards away.

At the same moment the Doctor threw himself down amongst the thick
growth, dragging his companion with him.

"Lie close," he whispered, and it was well that they were both lying
flat, for there was a flash of light, a long line of smoke, and in
response to a sharp pattering sound a little shower of twigs and leaves
came dropping around.

This was answered by firing evidently from the other side of the wood
again and again, the reports each time sounding more and more distant,
while as Phil lay flat upon his face he could hear trampling and the
sounds of men hurrying among the trees right past them, two coming so
near that the boy wondered that they were not seen.

"Don't speak, my boy," whispered the Doctor, as he held Phil's hand,
though the words were not needed, for the boy's attention was so taken
up by the exciting events that surroun