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As he lay crouched on his face, the red patches on his back, intended to guide the aim of an armed guard in case of any attempt to escape, showed with a sinister plainness. "The cable snapped, and has caught him round the body," Ellesborough explained. "Give him this brandy, please, while I try and make out " With skilled and gentle fingers he began to explore the injury. "A rib broken, I think."
The sudden tears came into Janet's eyes. But they did not show. "Oh, that'll be all right. Don't bother about me." "We shall bother!" said Rachel with energy, "but I'll tell you all about it presently. He won't stay to supper." She descended from the table, and Ellesborough rose. After a little more chat about the day and its doings, he said good-night to Janet. "How do you get back?"
Some wind of the happenings at Great End Farm had already reached the police, but they could throw no light on them. They arranged, however, with Ellesborough to patrol the farm and the neighbourhood after dark as often as their diminished force would allow.
Ellesborough responded eagerly, describing the huge convoy with which he himself had come over; and that amazing, that incredible march across three thousand miles of sea and land, which every day was pouring into the British Isles, and so into France, some 15,000 men the flower of American manhood, come to the rescue of the world.
What would Ellesborough say over there in his forester's hut, five miles beyond the hills, if he knew what she was doing whom she was expecting? She shut her eyes, and saw his lean, strong face, his look The church clock was striking, and surely in the distance, the sound of an opening gate? She hurried back to the house, and the sitting-room. The lamp was low. She revived it.
She watched for Ellesborough; she put on her best frocks for him; she was delighted to laugh and talk with him. But she watched for Mr. Shenstone, too, and would say something caustic or impatient if he were two or three days without calling. And when he called, Rachel very seldom snubbed him, as at first.
He comes from Maine, but he had been lumbering in Canada, with several mills and, camps under him. So he volunteered a year ago to bring over a large Forestry battalion mostly the men he had been working with in Quebec. Splendid fellows! But he's the king!" Then she raised her voice, "Captain Ellesborough!"
In a few more minutes they were in the sitting-room, Rachel throwing off her thick coat with Ellesborough's help, and declaring that she was not the least tired. "Don't believe her!" said Ellesborough, smiling at Janet. "She is not a truthful woman!" And his proud eyes returned to Rachel as though now that there was light to see her by he had no other use for them.
He could not be more than nineteen. He must have been captured in the fighting of July, perhaps in his first action. Captain Ellesborough had said to her that there was no fighting spirit among any of the prisoners. They were thankful to find themselves out of it, "safely captured," as one of them had had the bravado to say, and with enough to eat.
Then with a stentorian voice the chairman announced that Captain Ellesborough from Ralstone camp had come "to tell us what America is doing!" A roar from the crowd. Ellesborough saluted gaily, and then his hands in his pockets began to talk to them.
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