seemed more and more agitated-indeed, almost now unable to speak.
"Then they have missed their way. They should have joined by now. Have, perhaps, branched off at Kaiserslautern." Then he gave an order to the Marquis. "Ride forward at once with your party and endeavour to find them, and, if you succeed, send them on at once to Spires. There is the devil's work doing to-night."
"What work?" asked Andrew.
"Our men have lost all control of themselves and are burning the villages for miles round, while the country people are massacring all those whom they can catch alone, or in twos and threes. There is one of our soldiers hanging head downwards on a tree not half a league from here, riddled with a score of bullets, and, they say, some are being burnt if surprised when by themselves. Forward at once and find the Dragoons-they are not, at least, heated to boiling point!" and, as he spoke, Andrew heard the thud of his heels against his horse's flank and saw him rush on, followed by his men. And in the last rays of daylight, aided by the glow of countless fires, he observed that he was hatless and wigless, and that, behind him, streamed a mass of long, red-brown hair.
"Devil's work indeed!" said Andrew, turning to his companion, and in that same light observing that the young man was pallid and his face twitching.
"Heart up, heart up, my boy!" he exclaimed. "The horrors of war must not unseat a soldier thus" – but the other interrupted him, muttering huskily:
"You did not see-not recognize?" and as he spoke the astonishment on his face was accompanied by a look of almost awestruck unbelief.
"Not see-not recognize! Why, whom should I see, or recognize? 'Fore heaven! what I heard was enough for me."
"That man," Debrasques stammered. "The leader. You did not recognize him?"
"Not I. Debrasques," turning his gaze upon him swiftly, "who is he?"
"Your-your-I mean, my cousin. The man whose picture hangs in our hall-"
"And his name is-what?"
CHAPTER VI
THE VICOMTE DE BOIS-VALLÉE
"Did he hear my question, or not?" asked Andrew of himself, as, leaving the baggage and its caretakers behind under the charge of two of the dragoons, they rode on swiftly in search of the "King's" and "Queen's" regiments which had been ahead of them all the way from Epernay, and which, since they had not kept in advance, must have branched off, as Debrasques' cousin had surmised, on the road to Kaiserslautern. "Did he hear it?"
It was impossible he should be able to answer his own question, for, even as he had asked that other one, "And his name is-what?" the Marquis had given his order to advance as well as another to those who were to remain with the baggage, and it was most probable that, in the rattle and clatter of their steeds' hoofs and their accoutrements, it had escaped the other's ears.
And now, as they again went forward-more swiftly than they had done as yet since quitting Paris-he knew that this was not the time for repeating his question. Moreover, had he not solemnly promised, all unasked though the promise had been by the Marquis, that never again would he mention his cousin? And, man of honour as he was, he knew that the promise bound him; that, even though his suspicions were growing hot and furious within him, he must be as dumb as he had vowed to be.
"Yet," he thought, "that cousin is evidently a man of mark and position in the army; soon I shall know if what my suspicions point to is the case. And then-well, there is time enough. At present our surroundings demand more than that which I seek to know and to unravel."
They did indeed! Since, as they advanced kilometre by kilometre, those surroundings became more awful. The sky was now one vast pall of fiery red stretching from horizon to horizon, yet spotted and blurred beneath in twenty different directions by dense, compact masses of flames enveloped in clouds of smoke-the flames and smoke of burning villages, homesteads, and châteaux. Also, the air rang with the sound of musket discharges, while shrieks were now and again borne to their ears by the soft wind that blew in their faces; rang with shouts and cries in French and German, and sometimes in English, and with the horribly piteous yells of horses shut in burning stables and forgotten.
Ere they had ridden a quarter of a league from where the officer who was Debrasques' cousin had passed them, they came across the body of the man he had spoken of, hanging, as he had described, head downwards from the branch of a tree, his body perforated by bullets that had evidently been fired into him after he had been strung up. That was undoubted, for beneath his head, which almost touched the ground, was a pool of blood that must have dripped from his wounds as he swung there, and which would not have been beneath him had he been shot ere hung; nor, it was certain, would he have been hung at all if already dead and no use as a living target.
"Your countryman," said Andrew to the Marquis, as they paused a moment to regard this awful spectacle. "See to his uniform-what it is I know not, except that it is not that which we wore in the old days, and I doubt if Jack Churchill has changed it."
"I know it," said Debrasques-who had recovered somewhat his calm, as well as his colour, since he was no longer in the vicinity of his cousin-peering down from his horse at the unfortunate body on which the rays of the rising moon now shone clear. "He is of Du Plessis' corps. Observe the boar stamped on his shoulder-piece. 'Tis Du Plessis' own cognizance."
As he spoke there rose upon their ears more shouting and roaring of voices than they had observed for some time-harsh voices close by bawling in German, then shouts of approval-once they heard a raucous, guttural laugh as from some deep, full throat-next an exclamation of rage in English, and a loud call in the same tongue. "Help, help!" they heard that voice cry-though Andrew alone understood it. "Help me, save me from these bloodthirsty dogs!" After which the cries were smothered with the German roars once more, and again that savage laugh rolled forth.
"A countryman!" exclaimed Andrew, "and in dire peril. And the voices are close by. Debrasques, as I helped you, help me, help him, now," and he gave the reins to his horse and clutched his sword firmly, while he headed for where the noise and that piteous call had come from. And, guided by him, Debrasques and the four remaining dragoons rode for the spot, being assisted to find it by a bright light that burned amongst a copse of young oaks.
Soon they reached it, crushing through saplings and great ferns and brushwood to do so, guided always by the roars of German throats, the shrieks of the Englishman, above all, by that wild, savage laugh. Reached an open spot, a grassy glade, some sixty feet square, in the middle of which stood a sturdy oak that had obtained perhaps one-half of what its full growth would be in days to come-and with, beneath its branches and piled against its trunk, a freshly-lighted fire already burning brightly; a fire composed of dry brushwood and two or three young trees hastily chopped into fagots and billets.
But it was above that fire that the real horror was, for there, swinging from the lowest branch of the young oak by a cord, head downwards, and perilously near the flames as they leaped up, was the body of the Englishman whose cries they had heard-that body being swung backwards and forwards by his struggles and convulsions, the arms thrown wildly about, and the hands clutching at space.
With a shout, Andrew, who led the way, was amongst some twenty wild Rhenish Bavarian peasants, the bright sword flashing now like a streak of phosphorus in the moonlight as it darted here and there-through one man's throat and another's breast-while the horse he bestrode flung the boors asunder as a ship's forefoot throws off the waves, and while behind him came Debrasques and the dragoons, themselves dealing blows right and left, and their steeds trampling down those who had fallen. Then, dropping the reins upon his horse's neck, Andrew's great left hand seized the swinging man by the belt and dragged him to one side of the flames, one touch of the rapier sundered the rope, and, a moment later,
