fter all that you've done for me."

"Thank you for your good words, Mr. Scott, but it's impossible for me to
go. Keep in the shadow of the wall, and a dozen steps will take you to
the conservatory."

John wrung the Alsatian's hand, stepped out, and pressed himself against
the side of the house. The breeze still blew upon his face, revivifying
and intoxicating. The lazy, feathery clouds were yet drifting before the
moon and stars.

He saw to his right the gleam of a bayonet as a sentinel walked back and
forth and he saw another to his left. His heart beat high with hope. He
was merely a mote in infinite night, and surely they could not see him.

He walked swiftly along in the shadow of the house, and then sprang into
the conservatory, where he crouched between two tall rose bushes. He
waited there a little while, breathing hard, but he had not been
observed. From his rosy shelter he could still see the sentinels on
either side, walking up and down, undisturbed. Around him was a
frightful litter. The shell, the history of which he would never know,
had struck fairly in the center of the place, and it must have burst in
a thousand fragments. Scarcely a pane of glass had been left unbroken,
and the great pots, containing rare fruits and flowers, were mingled
mostly in shattered heaps. It was a pitiable wreck, and it stirred John,
although he had seen so many things so much worse.

He walked a little distance in a stooping position, and then stood up
among some shrubs, tall enough to hide him. He noticed a slight dampness
in the air, and he saw, too, that the feathery clouds were growing
darker. The faint quiver in the air brought with it, as always, the
rumble of the guns, but he believed that it was not a blended sound.
There was real thunder on the horizon, where the French lay, and then he
saw a distant flash, not white like that of a searchlight, but like
yellow lightning. Rain, a storm perhaps, must be at hand. He had read
that nearly all the great battles in the civil war in his own country
had been followed at once by violent storms of thunder, lightning and
rain. Then why not here, where immense artillery combats never ceased?

Near the end of the conservatory he paused and looked back at the house.
Every window was dark. There must be light inside, but shutters were
closed. His heart throbbed with intense gratitude to Weber. Without him
escape would have been impossible. He would make his way to the French.
H