Dalroy trudged a good twenty paces before he dared trust his voice. Even then, he blurted out, not the measured agreement which his brain dictated, but a prayer from his very heart. "May God bless and guard you, dear!" was what he said, and Irene's response was choked by a pitiful little sob. Suddenly Dalroy, whose hearing was quickened by the training of Indian _shikar_, touched the corporal's arm, and stood fast. Bates gave a peculiar click in his throat, and the squad halted, each man's feet remaining in whatever position they happened to be at the moment. "Horses coming this way," breathed Dalroy. "Right, sir. This'll be your two, with Jan wot's-his-name, I hope. Leave them to us, sir.--Smithy, Macdonald, and Shiner--forward!" Three shapes materialised close to the trio in front. The rain was still pelting down, and the trees nearly met overhead, so the road was discernible only by a strip of skyline, itself merely a less dense blackness. "Them two Yewlans," explained the corporal, "probably bringing a prisoner. Mind you don't hurt him." No more explicit instructions were given or needed. Of such material were the First Hundred Thousand. "Take her ladyship back a few yards, sir," gurgled Bates. "The horses may bolt. If they do we must stop 'em before they gallop over us." Every other consideration was banished instantly by the thrill of approaching combat. By this time, Dalroy was steeped in admiration for his escort's methods, and he awaited developments now with keen professional curiosity. And this is what he saw, after a breathless interval. A flash in the gloom, and the vague silhouettes of two hussars on horseback. One horse reared, the other swerved. One man never spoke. The other rapped out an oath which merged into a frantic squeal. By an odd trick of memory, Dalroy recalled old Joos's description of the death of Busch: "He squealed like a pig." Then came a cockney voice, "Cheer-o, mitey! We're friends, ammies! Damn it all, you ain't tikin' us for Boshes, are yer?" "_Hola!_ Jan Maertz!" shouted Dalroy. "_Monsieur!_" Irene laughed--yes, laughed, though two men had died before her eyes!--at the amazement conveyed by the Walloon's gruff yelp. "Don't be alarmed! These are friends, British soldiers," went on Dalroy. "I thought they were devils from hell," was the candid answer. Jan was unquestionably frightened. For one thing, his hands were tied behind his back, and he was being led by a halter fashioned out of a heel-rope, a plight in which the Chevalier Bayard himself might have quaked. For another, he had been plodding along at the side of one of the horses, thinking bitterly of the fair Léontine, whose buxom waist he would never squeeze again, when a beam of dazzling light revealed a crouching, nondescript being which flung itself upward in a panther-like spring, and buried a bayonet to the socket in the body of the nearest trooper. No wonder Jan was scared.