“Yes sorr.”

“Did you form any opinion from anything else you saw, of his object in sending that message?”

“Only from what I saw of him.”

“Well, what was that?”

“I saw him look afther the young leddy as she rode away, and then wheel about and go straight back into the wood.”

“And what did you think of that?” said the colonel, with a half smile.

“I thought it was shacrifice, sorr.”

“What do you mean?” said the colonel sharply.

“I mane, sorr,” said Cassidy stoutly, “that he was givin’ up hisself and his sister for that young leddy.”

The colonel looked at the sergeant.  “Ask Mr. Forsyth to come to me privately, and return here with him.”

As darkness fell, some half a dozen dismounted troopers, headed by Forsyth and Cassidy, passed quietly out of the lower gate and entered the wood.  An hour later the colonel was summoned from the dinner table, and the guests heard the quick rattle of a wagon turning out of the road gate—­but the colonel did not return.  An indefinable uneasiness crept over the little party, which reached its climax in the summoning of the other officers, and the sudden flashing out of news.  The reconnoitring party had found the dead bodies of Peter Atherly and his sister on the plains at the edge of the empty wood.

The women were gathered in the commandant’s quarters, and for the moment seemed to have been forgotten.  The officers’ wives talked with professional sympathy and disciplined quiet; the English ladies were equally sympathetic, but collected.  Lady Elfrida, rather white, but patient, asked a few questions in a voice whose contralto was rather deepened.  One and all wished to “do something”—­anything “to help”—­and one and all rebelled that the colonel had begged them to remain within doors.  There was an occasional quick step on the veranda, or the clatter of a hoof on the parade, a continued but subdued murmur from the whitewashed barracks, but everywhere a sense of keen restraint.

When they emerged on the veranda again, the whole aspect of the garrison seemed to have changed in that brief time.  In the faint moonlight they could see motionless files of troopers filling the parade, the officers in belted tunics and slouched hats,—­but apparently not the same men; the half lounging ease and lazy dandyism gone, a grim tension in all their faces, a set abstraction in all their acts.  Then there was the rolling of heavy wheels in the road, and the two horses of the ambulance appeared.  The sentries presented arms; the colonel took off his hat; the officers uncovered; the wagon wheeled into the parade; the surgeon stepped out.  He exchanged a single word with the colonel, and lifted the curtain of the ambulance.

As the colonel glanced within, a deep but embarrassed voice fell upon his ear.  He turned quickly.  It was Lord Reginald, flushed and sympathetic.