head, so the road was
discernible only by a strip of skyline, itself merely a less dense
blackness.

"Them two Yewlans," explained the corporal, "probably bringing a
prisoner. Mind you don't hurt him."

No more explicit instructions were given or needed. Of such material
were the First Hundred Thousand.

"Take her ladyship back a few yards, sir," gurgled Bates. "The horses
may bolt. If they do we must stop 'em before they gallop over us."

Every other consideration was banished instantly by the thrill of
approaching combat. By this time, Dalroy was steeped in admiration for
his escort's methods, and he awaited developments now with keen
professional curiosity. And this is what he saw, after a breathless
interval. A flash in the gloom, and the vague silhouettes of two hussars
on horseback. One horse reared, the other swerved. One man never spoke.
The other rapped out an oath which merged into a frantic squeal. By an
odd trick of memory, Dalroy recalled old Joos's description of the death
of Busch: "He squealed like a pig."

Then came a cockney voice, "Cheer-o, mitey! We're friends, ammies! Damn
it all, you ain't tikin' us for Boshes, are yer?"

"_Hola!_ Jan Maertz!" shouted Dalroy.

"_Monsieur!_"

Irene laughed--yes, laughed, though two men had died before her
eyes!--at the amazement conveyed by the Walloon's gruff yelp.

"Don't be alarmed! These are friends, British soldiers," went on Dalroy.

"I thought they were devils from hell," was the candid answer.

Jan was unquestionably frightened. For one thing, his hands were tied
behind his back, and he was being led by a halter fashioned out of a
heel-rope, a plight in which the Chevalier Bayard himself might have
quaked. For another, he had been plodding along at the side of one of
the horses, thinking bitterly of the fair Leontine, whose buxom waist he
would never squeeze again, when a beam of dazzling light revealed a
crouching, nondescript being which flung itself upward in a panther-like
spring, and buried a bayonet to the socket in the body of the nearest
trooper. No wonder Jan was scared.

The soldiers had caught both horses. Dalroy, a cavalryman, had abandoned
the earlier remounts with a twinge of regret. He thought now there was
no reason why he and Irene should not ride, as the day's tramp, not to
speak of the strain of the past hour, might prove a drawback before
morning.

"Can you sit a horse astride?" he asked her.

"I prefer it," she said pro