The last cavalrymen, left at the entrance of the village until the column should have cleared it, passed along the street, turning in their saddles to look at the empty road behind them. The sentries at the inn mounted and trotted quickly forward to rejoin their ranks. The last man passed out of sight. The village street seemed strangely empty in the absence of the floods of men that had been pouring through it, with but little interruption, for many hours. Only the rhythmic tramp of the infantry upon the road, pulsating through the air like the audible systole and diastole of some mighty heart, and fading with every moment, remained like a reminiscence of the army. Presently that, too, ceased. Silence brooded over the houses whose outlines were rapidly blurring with the oncoming night, a silence broken only by the melancholy ululations of an owl that ventured to scour the deserted street. That owl was baulked of its stoop by a sudden human utterance in a Cockney voice. "It's all right, Bill--they've gone." The figure of a man was dimly defined in the doorway of one of the cottages. He turned to answer a question. "Yus. The 'ole bloomin' lot. Rearguard an' all." The figure in the doorway was joined by another from the dark interior of the cottage, and the pair slunk cautiously into the street and looked up and down. "We've done it, Sam," said the man addressed as Bill. "Yus," replied Sam, peering around him under a frown from heavy brows. "Now for that public--me ole Gawd-lummy ain't 'ad nothin' in it fer a week." "'Struth!" said Bill, stretching himself. "I ain't 'arf stiff wiv standin' in that poky little cupboard." "Not so stiff as those poor blighters 'll be to-night," said Sam, with a thought of his marching comrades. "Now--right wheel! March! An' see that you've got a cartridge in yer rifle," he added in a tone of authority. It was evident that he was the leading spirit. There was the metallic click of a cartridge inserted into the breech and then both men crept furtively in the shadow of the cottages towards the inn. The hanging sign of the house was silhouetted black against the sky just above their heads, when Sam stopped suddenly, pointing his rifle into the gloom. "'Alt! 'Oo goes there?" he cried; under his breath he blasphemed rapidly, ferociously; the blasphemy of a man whose nerves are chaos, his speech-centres out of control. A shadowy figure moved in the darkness. "'Ands up--or I fire!" shouted Sam, the menace rising harshly out of his muttered vituperation. A pitiful voice replied from the obscurity. Its panic expressed itself in a thin rising inflection that became almost a squeal. "Don't shoot!--don't shoot!" "Come out into the road," commanded Sam. "Cover 'im, Bill," he added. The figure obeyed, was now slightly more visible against the light reflected from the white road. "What are you doin' 'ere?" asked Sam. The voice became rapid in nervous explanation.