Two more days went by; Uskub had fallen; everybody gave up the idea of Anglo-French troops arriving to relieve Nish, and everybody began to talk about evacuation. About six o'clock of a stormy dusk, four days after the fall of Uskub, a Serbian soldier came to the hotel to ask Sylvia to come at once to a hospital. She wondered if something had happened to Michael, if somehow he had heard she was in Nish, and that he had sent for her. But when she reached the school-room that was serving as an improvised ward she found Hazlewood lying back upon a heap of straw that was called a bed. "Done a damned stupid thing," he murmured. "Got hit, and they insisted on my being sent back to Nish. Think I'm rather bad. Why haven't you left?" "The line is cut." "I know. You ought to have been gone by now. You can take my horse. Every one will evacuate Nish. No chance. The Austrians have joined up with the Bulgarians. Bound to fall. I want you to take the keys of my safe and burn all my papers. Don't forget the cipher. Go and do it now and let me know it's done. Quick, it's worrying me. Nothing important, but it's worrying me." Sylvia decided to say nothing to him about Miss Potberry's arrival in order not to worry him any more. Miss Potberry should have his horse: Nish might be empty as a tomb, but she herself should stay on for news of Michael Fane. "What are you waiting for?" he asked, fretfully. "Damn it! I sha'n't last forever. That's Antitch you're staring at in the next bed." Sylvia looked at the figure muffled in bandages. Apparently all the lower part of his face had been shot away, and she could see nothing but a pair of dark and troubled eyes wandering restlessly in the candle-light. "We took our finals together," said Hazlewood. Sylvia went away quickly; if she had paused to compare this meeting with the first meeting in the railway carriage not yet three weeks ago, she should have broken down. When Miss Potberry heard of her chief's arrival in Nish she insisted upon going to see him. "But, my dear woman, he may be dying. What's the good of bothering him now? I'll find out whatever he can tell me. You must get ready to leave Nish. Pack up your things." "He may be glad to dictate something," Miss Potberry argued. "Please let me come. I am anxious to report to Captain Hazlewood. I'm sure if you had told him that I was here he would have wished to see me." Sylvia did not feel that she could contest anything; with Miss Potberry's help she burned the few papers that remained in the safe, together with the cipher, which glowed and smoldered in the basin for what seemed an interminable time. When not a single record of Hazlewood's presence in Serbia remained, Sylvia and Miss Potberry went back to the hospital. "You've burned everything?" he asked. Sylvia nodded. "Is that a nurse? I can't see in this infernal candle-light, and I'm chockful of morphia, which makes my eye-lids twitch."