The Night of Madness
had dashed through its surprised resistance, and was gone, on to Lützelburg.
So much Georges surmised—and truly. "The fools!" he cried. "They were not alert without us, Charles. Come—let us get back to the inn. At least we have left to us that cursed Irishman and—"
"If so be it they have not already escaped through the fields," interrupted Charles.
Their voices faded into murmurs as they retreated. The girl tugged at O'Rourke's hand.
"Hurry, m'sieur," she implored.
But O'Rourke was thinking of his comrade and the gantlet he had just run. The reports of the carbines still filled his ears with grim forebodings.
"God send that he was not hit!" he prayed fervently. "A true man, if ever one lived."
"Yes, yes, m'sieur. But come, ah, come!"—with an odd little catch in her voice.
Obediently O'Rourke followed her. They trod for a time upon a little path, worn through the open fields, making toward a stretch of forest that loomed dimly vast and mysterious to the southwards.
"I'm wondering, Mam'selle Delphine," said the Irishman, "how we got out there on the hillside."
"By an underground passage," she explained impatiently. "The inn," she added, "is old; it bore not always as good a reputation as it does now."
"Thank ye," he said. "And since ye can tell me that, can ye not go a bit further and tell me how I am to balance me account with ye, mam'selle?"
"Yes," she replied; "I—I will tell you."
There was a strange hesitation in her speech—as though
[ 223 ]
