all themselves Englishmen and ought to know better, he's a special
spite on the Rifles.'

The sergeant paid no heed to the sneer. He was beginning to think.

'How long has this been going on?' he asked.

'Only since daylight. There was a child up yonder, last night; but
it stands to reason a child can't be doing this. He never misses, I
tell you. Oh, you had luck, just now!'

'I wonder,' said Sergeant Wilkes, musing. 'I'll try it again,
anyway.' And while the rifleman gasped he stepped out boldly into
the road.

He knew that his guess might, likely enough, be wrong: that, even
were it right, the next two seconds might see him a dead man.
Yet he was bound to satisfy himself. With his eyes on the sinister
window--it stood half open and faced straight down the narrow
street--he knelt by the corpse, found its ammunition pouch, unbuckled
the strap and drew out a handful of cartridges. Then he straightened
himself steadily--but his heart was beating hard--and as steadily
walked back and rejoined the rifleman in the passage.

'You have a nerve,' said the rifleman, his voice shaking a little.
'Looks like he don't fire on redcoats; but you have a nerve all the
same.'

'Or else he may be gone,' suggested the sergeant, and on the instant
corrected himself; 'but I warn you not to reckon upon that. Is there
a window facing on him anywhere, round the bend of the street?'

'I dunno.'

The rifleman peered forth, turning his head sideways for a cautious
reconnoitre. 'Maybe he _has_ gone, after all--'

It was but his head he exposed beyond the angle of the doorway; and
yet, on the instant a report cracked out sharply, and he pitched
forward into the causeway. His own rifle clattered on the stones
beside him, and where he fell he lay, like a stone.

Sergeant Wilkes turned with a set jaw and mounted the stairs of the
deserted house behind him. They led him up to the roof, and there he
dropped on his belly and crawled. Across three roofs he crawled, and
lay down behind a balustrade overlooking the transverse roadway.
Between the pillars of the balustrade he looked right across the
roadway and into the half-open window of the cottage. The room
within was dark save for the glimmer of a mirror on the back wall.

'Kill him I must,' growled the sergeant through his teeth, 'though I
wait the day for it.'

And he waited there, crouching for an hour--for two hours.

He was shifting his cramped attitude a little--a ve