that cottage—or didn't you?—right above there, under the wall; the place with one window in it? There's a devil behind it somewheres; he fires from the back of the room, and what's more, he never misses his man. You have Nick's own luck—the pretty target you made, too; that is unless, like some that call 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 very little—for about the twentieth time, when a smur of colour showed on the mirror, and the next instant passed into a dark shadow. It may be that the marksman within the cottage had spied yet another rifleman in the street. But the sergeant had noted the reflection in the glass, that it was red. Two shots rang out together. But the sergeant, after peering through the parapet, stood upright, walked back across the roofs, and regained the stairway.
The street was empty. From one of the doorways a voice called to him to come back. But he walked on, up the street and across the roadway to a green-painted wicket. It opened upon a garden, and across the garden he came to a flight of steps with an open door above. Through this, too, he passed and stared into a small room. On the far side of it, in an armchair, sat Corporal Sam, leaning back, with a hand to his breast; and facing him, with a face full of innocent wonder, stood a child—a small, grave, curly-headed child.
CHAPTER VIII.
'I'm glad you done it quick,' said Corporal Sam.
His voice was weak, yet he managed to get out the words firmly, leaning back in the wooden armchair, with one hand on his left breast, spread and covering the lower ribs.
The sergeant did not answer at once. Between the spread fingers he saw a thin stream welling, darker than the scarlet tunic which it discoloured. For perhaps three seconds he watched it. To him the time seemed as many minutes, and all the while he was aware of the rifle-barrel warm in his grasp.
'Because,' Corporal Sam pursued with a smile that wavered a little, half wistfully seeking his eyes, 'you'd 'a had to do it, anyway—wouldn't you? And any other way it—might—'a been hard.'
'Lad, what made you?'
It was all Sergeant Wilkes could say, and he said it, wondering at the sound of his own voice. The child, who, seeing that the two were friends and not, after all, disposed to murder one another, had wandered to the head of the stairs to look down into the sunlit garden shining below, seemed to guess that something was amiss after all, and, wandering back, stood at a little distance, finger to lip.
'I don't know,' the corporal answered, like a man with difficulty trying to collect his thoughts. 'Leastways, not to explain to you. It must 'a been comin' on for some time.'
'But what, lad—what?'
'Ah—"what?" says you. That's the trouble, and I can't never make you see—yes, make you see—the hell of it. It began with thinkin'—just with thinkin'—that first night you led me home from the breach. And the things I saw and heard; and then, when I came here, only meanin' to save him—'
He broke off and nodded at the child, who catching his eye, nodded back smiling.
He and the corporal had evidently made great friends.
But the corporal's gaze, wavering past him, had fixed itself on a trestle bed in the corner.
'There was a woman,' he said. 'She was stone cold; but the child told me—until I stopped his mouth, and made a guess at the rest. I took her down and buried her in the garden. And with that it came over me that the whole of it—the whole business—was wrong, and that to put myself right I must kill, and keep on killing. Of course I knew what the end would be. But I never looked for such luck as your coming. … I was ashamed, first along, catching sight o' you—not—not ashamed, only I didn't want you to see. But when you took cover an' waited—though I wouldn't 'a hurt you for worlds—why then I knew how the end would be.'
'Lad,' said the sergeant, watching him as he panted, 'I don't understand you, except that you're desperate wrong. But I saw you—saw you by the lookin'-glass, behind there; and 'tis right you should know.'
'O' course you saw me. … I'm not blamin', am I? You had to do it, and I had to take it. That was the easiest way. I couldn' do no other, an' you couldn' do no other, that bein' your duty. An' the child, there—'
Sergeant Wilkes turned for a moment to the child, who met his gaze, round-eyed; then to his friend again.
But the corporal's head had dropped forward on his chest.
The sergeant touched his shoulder, to make sure; then, with one look behind him, but ignoring the child, reeled out of the room and down the stairs, as in a dream. In the sunny garden the fresh air revived him and he paused to stare at a rose-bush, rampant, covered with white blossoms against which the bees were humming. Their
