the place, but again recollecting
herself, led the way along a stone passage, into which a flight of
stairs descended into the apsidal chancel, roughly boarded off from
the rest of the church. It was a ruinous, desolate place, and Berenger
looked round in dismay for some place on which to lay down his almost
unconscious burthen. The lady bent her head and signed towards the stone
sedilia in the wall; then, after two ineffectual essays to make her
voice audible, choked as it was with long weeping, she said, low and
huskily, 'We will make him more comfortable soon;' and added some orders
to the soldier, who disappeared up the stairway, and Berenger understood
that he was gone to fetch bedding. Then taking from under her heavy
mourning cloak a large pair of scissors, she signed to Berenger how to
support his brother, while they relieved him of his corslet, sword-belt,
and doublet. The soldier had meantime returned with an old woman, both
loaded with bedding, which she signed to them to arrange in one of the
little bays or niches that served to form a crown of lesser chapels
around the chancel. She flung aside her muffling cloak, but her black
hood still hung far over her face, and every now and then hand or
handkerchief was lifted as if to clear her eyes from the tears that
would not cease to gather and blind her; and she merely spoke when some
direction to an assistant, some sympathetic word to the patient, was
needed. Even Philip in his dizzy trance guessed that he was succeeding
to the bed whence one much dearer had gone to his quieter rest in the
cloister. Before he was laid there, however, the bugle sounded; there
was a loud shout, and Philip exclaimed, 'Go, brother!'

'Trust him to me, sir,' said the sunken, extinguished voice; 'we will do
our best for him.'

He was forced merely to lift Philip to the bed, and to hurry away, while
the soldier followed him saying, consolingly, 'Fear not, sir, now our
Lady of Hope has him. Nothing goes ill to which she sets her hand.'

Another growl of artillery was not heard, and it was time for the
warriors to forget the wounded in the exigencies of the present. An
attack was made on both gates at once, and the commandant being
engaged at his own post, Berenger had to make the utmost of his brief
experience, backed by the counsel of a tough old sergeant; and great
was his sense of exhilaration, and absolute enjoyment in this full and
worthy taxing of every power of mind or body. T