Maertz was swearing horribly, with the incoherence of a man just aroused from drunken sleep. Irene moved a few steps to meet Dalroy. Her face was marble white, her eyes strangely dilated. "Are you hurt?" she asked. "No. And you?" "Untouched, thanks to you. But those brutes have killed poor Madame Joos!" The wounded Uhlan was stretched between them. He stirred convulsively, and groaned. Dalroy looked at the sword which he still held. He resisted a great temptation, and sprang over the prostrate body. He was about to say something when a ghastly object staggered past. It was the man who received the sabre-cut, which had gashed his shoulder deeply. "_Oh, mon Dieu!_" he screamed. "_Oh, mon Dieu!_" He may have been making for some burrow. They never knew. He wailed that frenzied appeal as he shambled on--always the same words. He could think of nothing else but the last cry of despairing humanity to the All-Powerful. Owing to the flight of the cavalry, Dalroy imagined that some body of allied troops, Belgian or French, was advancing from Namur, so he did not obey his first impulse, which was to enter the nearest house and endeavour to get away through the gardens or other enclosures in rear. He glanced at the hapless body on the cart, and saw by the eyes that life had departed. Léontine was sobbing pitifully. Maertz, having recovered his senses, was striving to calm her. But Joos remained silent; he held his wife's limp hand, and it was as though he awaited some reassuring clasp which should tell him that she still lived. Dalroy had no words to console the bereaved old man. He turned aside, and a mist obscured his vision for a little while. Then he heard the wounded German hiccoughing, and he looked again at the sword, because this was the assassin who had foully murdered a gentle, kind-hearted, and inoffensive woman. But he could not demean himself by becoming an executioner. Richly as the criminal deserved to be sent with his victim to the bar of Eternal Justice, the Englishman decided to leave him to the avengers coming through the town. The shooting drew nearer. A number of women and children, with a few men, appeared. They were running and screaming. The first batch fled past; but an elderly dame, spent with even a brief flurry, halted for a few seconds when she saw the group near the dog-team. "Henri Joos!" she gasped. "And Léontine! What, in Heaven's name, are you doing here?" It was Madame Stauwaert, the Andenne cousin with whom they hoped to find sanctuary. The miller gazed at her in a curiously abstracted way. "Is that you, Margot?" he said. "We were coming to you. But they have wounded Lise. See! Here she is!"