He took her up in his arms and stepped off the doorstep into a deep white drift.
Far over toward the highroad, the Captain’s grey horse was tied to a branch of the hedge. In the silence Clotilde could hear him pawing the snow and, a moment later, raise his voice in a clear, shrill whinny.
“What can ail him?” the Captain wondered aloud, but Clotilde, raising her head from the folds of the muffling cloak, guessed the reason at once.
“He hears horses in the lane above,” she said. “Hark! can you not hear them coming? Oh, put me down, put me down, you are not safe here, that scarlet coat of yours can be seen a mile away!”
Without his cloak, the officer was indeed a distinct and unmistakable mark against the white snow, but that fact did not seem to disconcert him.
“I will carry you to the gap in the hedge, the way from there is easier for you to walk,” he said, and strode forward up the buried path.
Clotilde was in an agony of anxiety long before he set her down. As they reached the hedge she looked up through the garden and saw the white gate swing open and five men in buff and blue dismount and come running in. At the sight of her companion, they gave a shout and advanced down the hill, stumbling and floundering in the deep snow.
“I yield you into the hands of your friends,” said the Captain gravely but she could only wring her hands in an agony of terror and cry:
He was hardly a dozen feet from her when two shots rang out in rapid succession and he stopped, staggered for a second and then stumbled on.
“It is nothing,” he turned to call back to her with a reassuring smile, although his face was white with pain.
He set off again, but his pace grew ever slower and more faltering. Across the field sounded once more the high, loud neighing of his horse.
Clotilde, glancing in that direction, saw suddenly that two more men had been left at the edge of the lane and were now crouching behind a clump of bayberry bushes close to where the English officer must pass. As she watched one of them rose to his knees, levelled his musket and took deliberate aim.
“Stop,” she cried out, turning to run toward them through the deep drifts. Although her feet would scarcely carry her, she managed somehow to make her way along until she caught up with the wavering scarlet figure that was struggling nearer and nearer to the hidden enemy.