little red deer_,' and you half
understood me, for you are wise in strange ways, as I am."

"I remember," I said.

His strong fingers closed tighter on my hand. "Woman--or doe--it's
all one now; and I am out of prison--the prison _he_ sent me to! Do
you understand that he wronged me--me, the soldier Garenne, in
garrison at Vincennes; he, the officer, the aristocrat?"

He choked, crushing my hand in a spasmodic grip. "Ami, the little red
deer was beautiful--to me. He took her--the doe--a silly maid of
Paradise--and I was in irons, m'sieu, for three years."

He glared at vacancy, tears falling from his staring eyes.

"Your wife?" I asked, quietly.

"Yes, ami."

He dropped my numbed fingers and rubbed his eyes with the back of his
big hand.

"Then Jacqueline is not your little daughter?" I asked, gravely.

"Hers--not mine. That has been the most terrible of all for me--since
she died--died so young, too, m'sieu--and all alone--in Paris. If he
had not done that--if he had been kind to her. And she was only a
child, ami, yet he left her."

All the ferocity in his eyes was gone; he raised a vacant, grief-lined
visage to meet mine, and stood stupidly, heavy hands hanging.

Then, shoulders sloping, he shambled off into the thicket, trailing
his battered rifle.

When he was very far away I motioned to Speed.

"I think," said I, "that we had better try to do something at the
semaphore if we are going to stop that train in time."

XX

THE SEMAPHORE

The telegraph station at the semaphore was a little, square, stone
hut, roofed with slate, perched high on the cliffs. A sun-scorched,
wooden signal-tower rose in front of it; behind it a line of telegraph
poles stretched away into perspective across the moors. Beyond the
horizon somewhere lay the war-port of Lorient, with its arsenal, armed
redoubts, and heavy bastions; beyond that was war.

While we plodded on, hip deep, through gorse and thorn and heath, we
cautiously watched a spot of red moving to and fro in front of the
station; and as we drew nearer we could see the sentry very
distinctly, rifle slung muzzle down, slouching his beat in the
sunshine.

He was a slovenly specimen, doubtless a deserter from one of the three
provincial armies now forming for the hopeless dash at Belfort and the
German eastern communications.

When Speed and I emerged from the golden gorse into plain view the
sentinel stopped in his tracks, shoved his big, red hands