from the
canteen fires drooped heavily.

The spot at the bottom of the garden where she had been accustomed to
climb the wall to meet Matthaus, was the only inch of English ground in
which she took any interest; and in spite of the disagreeable haze
prevailing she walked out there till she reached the well-known corner.
Every blade of grass was weighted with little liquid globes, and slugs
and snails had crept out upon the plots. She could hear the usual faint
noises from the camp, and in the other direction the trot of farmers on
the road to the town, for it was market-day. She observed that her
frequent visits to this corner had quite trodden down the grass in the
angle of the wall, and left marks of garden soil on the stepping-stones
by which she had mounted to look over the top. Seldom having gone there
till dusk, she had not considered that her traces might be visible by
day. Perhaps it was these which had revealed her trysts to her father.

While she paused in melancholy regard, she fancied that the customary
sounds from the tents were changing their character. Indifferent as
Phyllis was to camp doings now, she mounted by the steps to the old
place. What she beheld at first awed and perplexed her; then she stood
rigid, her fingers hooked to the wall, her eyes staring out of her head,
and her face as if hardened to stone.

On the open green stretching before her all the regiments in the camp
were drawn up in line, in the mid-front of which two empty coffins lay on
the ground. The unwonted sounds which she had noticed came from an
advancing procession. It consisted of the band of the York Hussars
playing a dead march; next two soldiers of that regiment in a mourning
coach, guarded on each side, and accompanied by two priests. Behind came
a crowd of rustics who had been attracted by the event. The melancholy
procession marched along the front of the line, returned to the centre,
and halted beside the coffins, where the two condemned men were
blindfolded, and each placed kneeling on his coffin; a few minutes pause
was now given, while they prayed.

A firing-party of twenty-four men stood ready with levelled carbines. The
commanding officer, who had his sword drawn, waved it through some cuts
of the sword-exercise till he reached the downward stroke, whereat the
firing-party discharged their volley. The two victims fell, one upon his
face across his coffin, the other backwards.

As the volley resounded