He had to repeat the question a number of times, but
at last a muffled voice said, “Nothing.”
“Nothing!” He insisted quietly upon a
further answer. At the tender tones of the captain’s
voice, the phlegmatic corporal turned and winked gravely
at the man next to him.
“Won’t you tell me?”
The girl shook her head.
“Please tell me!”
The silent privates were moving their feet uneasily
and wondering how long they were to wait.
The captain said: “Please, won’t
you tell me?”
Then this girl’s voice began in stricken tones
half coherent, and amid violent sobbing: “It
was grandpa’s. He—he—he
said he was going to shoot anybody who came in here—he
didn’t care if there were thousands of ’em.
And—and I know he would, and I was afraid
they’d kill him. And so—and—so
I stole away his pistol—and I was going
to hide it when you—you—you
kicked open the door.”
The men straightened up and looked at each other.
The girl began to weep again.
The captain mopped his brow. He peered down at
the girl. He mopped his brow again. Suddenly
he said: “Ah, don’t cry like that.”
He moved restlessly and looked down at his boots.
He mopped his brow again.
Then he gripped the corporal by the arm and dragged
him some yards back from the others. “Jones,”
he said, in an intensely earnest voice, “will
you tell me what in the devil I am going to do?”
The corporal’s countenance became illuminated
with satisfaction at being thus requested to advise
his superior officer. He adopted an air of great
thought, and finally said: “Well, of course,
the feller with the grey sleeve must be upstairs,
and we must get past the girl and up there somehow.
Suppose I take her by the arm and lead her—”
“What!” interrupted the captain from between
his clinched teeth. As he turned away from the
corporal, he said fiercely over his shoulder:
“You touch that girl and I’ll split your
skull!”
The corporal looked after his captain with an expression
of mingled amazement, grief, and philosophy.
He seemed to be saying to himself that there unfortunately
were times, after all, when one could not rely upon
the most reliable of men. When he returned to
the group he found the captain bending over the girl
and saying: “Why is it that you don’t
want us to search upstairs?”
The girl’s head was buried in her crossed arms.
Locks of her hair had escaped from their fastenings,
and these fell upon her shoulder.
“Won’t you tell me?”
The corporal here winked again at the man next to
him.
“Because,” the girl moaned—“because—there
isn’t anybody up there.”
The captain at last said timidly: “Well,
I’m afraid—I’m afraid we’ll
have to——”
The girl sprang to her feet again, and implored him
with her hands. She looked deep into his eyes
with her glance, which was at this time like that
of the fawn when it says to the hunter, “Have
mercy upon me!”
