A Hero of the Pen

Hastily leaving the room he went to his own chamber.

CHAPTER XXIII.

The Vengeance of Passion

Alison had met Atkins at the foot of the stairs leading to their apartments, but he had not mounted them. He directed his steps to the room of the French steward of the castle, which had been pointed out to him by one of the soldiers.

The steward, an old man, with sharp, intelligent face, and dark, flashing eyes, sat at a table on which a lamp was burning, and examined his books. He looked up morosely as the door opened, but the embittered resentment which his features wore and with which he met everyone belonging to the hated soldiers quartered in the house, softened somewhat as he recognized the visitor. He knew that the travellers were Americans, forced to seek a night's rest in the castle from the impossibility of finding entertainment in the village. Although guests of the enemy, they did not belong to the hated nation, and the grim reserve which Alison had this afternoon shown in the circle of the officers, and which the Frenchman had found opportunity to observe, gave him a decided advantage. The steward rose, and approached his visitor politely, but still with a sort of chilling reserve.

"In what way can I serve you, Monsieur?"

Henry circumspectly closed the door, and hastily scanned the apartment. "I wish to speak with you on a matter of importance," he said. "Are we safe from intrusion?"

"Perfectly so!" returned the Frenchman. "The room, as you see, has only this one door."

Alison drew near the table, and his voice sank to a whisper. "You know, I suppose, that we are forbidden to pursue our journey. My companions have consented to remain here for the night, but I must in any event go on to the mountains."

"That is impossible, Monsieur," said the Frenchman politely but coldly. "The Prussians hold guard over every avenue; no person can reach the mountain-road without their permission."

Alison gazed at the Frenchman sharply and searchingly. "And would you not know how to get there in spite of the guards, if you wished to send tidings to the French sharpshooters in the mountains!"

"I tell you, Monsieur, that all the avenues are guarded."

"There are always lurking-places in the mountains not known to the enemy, and which the inhabitants can use all the more safely," said Alison with great positiveness. "This very afternoon I heard the officers express their opinion, that in spite of the sharpest watch, a secret understandings till existed between the village and the mountains, and in this case there must be such a path."

"Possibly. But I know of none."

Instead of answering, Alison drew forth his letter-case, took from it a bank-note and silently held it towards the old man. He must have known the value of this piece of paper, and it must have been very great, for he gazed in terror at the American.

"The price of the path," said he curtly.

"I do not allow myself to be bribed, Monsieur," said the Frenchman decidedly.

Alison quietly laid the banknote on the table. "Not by the Germans, I understand that in advance! They might offer you tenfold this sum, and it would be in vain. But I do not belong to them,–I am not their friend. Did my business concern their interests, I should be allowed to pass their line. The fact that I am compelled to seek your aid, may prove to you that as a Frenchman you can assume the responsibility of this treachery. You must tell me the way!"

The argument was just, and the lordly confidence of the American did not fail of its effect upon the old steward; still he did not yield.

"Would you go alone, Monsieur?"

"Certainly."

"And this very night? You perhaps know what you will meet there."

"I do!" declared Alison, who thought it best to conceal his entire ignorance of affairs, and pretend to have been initiated. He reached his goal. He succeeded in goading on the Frenchman in the old steward's nature; in making serviceable his hatred to the enemy. The steward well knew what threatened in the mountains to-night, and the circumstance that the stranger, without the knowledge of the Germans, wished to go there alone, convinced him that here he had to deal with an ally. And so his resistance gave way.

"There is such a path," he said, lowering his voice. "It leads over the mountains to L. The Germans do not know it; even if they have chanced to discover it, it ends for them in the first defile on the right. They cannot possibly know that it continues on the other side, and extending through the forest, connects with our park. The beginning and end are too much hidden by rifts in the rock and by shrubbery; it is a secret of ours."

Alison's eyes gleamed with a savage joy. "Very well; and how am I to find the path?" he asked.

"You go into the park, and pass up the principal avenue, which is unguarded; to the left you will see a statue of Flora. Go past this into the grotto close by. It is not so closely shut in by the rocky walls, as it appears to be; there is a way of egress from it to the forest. Follow the narrow path through the bushes; there is but one, you cannot err, and in ten minutes you will have reached the defile; it leads to the left up the mountain road to the rocky plateau where stands a solitary fir. There you are already beyond the lines, and far enough from them not to be remarked."

Alison had listened in breathless attention, as if he would hold fast every word in his remembrance; now with an expression of sullen triumph in his eyes, he took the bank-note from the table and handed it to the Frenchman.

"I thank you!" he said. "Here, take this!"

The old man hesitated. "I did not do this for money, Monsieur," he said.

"I know it. It was from hatred to the enemy. Give yourself no uneasiness. I do not need the money, at least not for to-night," he added, while his lips curled with a cold, bitter irony. "But the information is worth more to me than this paper; take it; it will not lay heavy on your conscience!"

The steward threw one more glance at the money. One would hardly venture such a sum merely to compromise him, and the path certainly was not of so high value to the Prussians as to this morose stranger. He took the reward and muttered some words of thanks.

When about to go, Alison turned and gazed steadily and threateningly at the old man.

"Your complicity ensures your silence. I need not enjoin silence upon you. The Germans would shoot you if they knew you had helped me through their lines."

"I know it, Monsieur."

"If I return towards morning, I shall have found entrance to the mountains impossible, and shall be supposed to have passed the night in the castle. You are not to know otherwise.–Adieu!"

CHAPTER XXIV.

The Shadow of Doom

In Walter's chamber a bright light was also burning, but upon his entrance, he found no one there but Frederic.

"Doctor Behrend has been here the whole time," he said, "and he waited a long while for you; but he has been summoned over to the village. I believe Corporal Braun is in a very bad state."

Walter seemed unpleasantly surprised at these tidings. "Has Doctor Behrend gone? he asked. I wished very much to speak with him."

"The doctor wished it too. He said I should have ready your cloak and your pistols, as you were to go away this evening, and would not take me with you this time as usual when you go out on patrol duty."

"No, Frederic, not this time," said Walter absently. He paced several times up and down, then he halted suddenly. "It is all the same now!" he murmured. "Why not tell him what I was going to confide to Robert?–Frederic!"

"Herr Lieutenant!"

"It is possible an attack may be made to-night. Have you received orders to be ready for an alarm?"

"Yes, at ten o'clock with two men I am to patrol the park. It is for the sake of security, the captain says, because it is not guarded."

"Very well! In any event you will see the doctor before this. It was very necessary that I should speak with him, but I must go, and I have no time to seek him in the village. You will deliver my errand word for word, just as I tell you; but to him alone, and no other. Do you hear?"

"To no other!"

The next words were very difficult ones for Walter to speak. He struggled with himself for some moments.

"If it should come to a conflict, he is the only one who will not have to take a part in it, and the French sharp-shooters around here are a barbarous horde to whom nothing is sacred. He must protect Miss Forest so far as lies in his power."

"The American Miss?" returned Frederic slowly.