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She was turning again, when a babble of voices answered the orderly's announcement. "Raoul! Raoul!" half-a-dozen were calling, and then one spoke up sharp and distinct: "Tenez, mon bonhomme, ce sera votre gilet,
As a rule the most successful sorties are those in the early morning. We are called while it's still dark. Sleepily I try to reconcile the French orderly's muttered, C'est l'heure, monsieur, that rouses me from slumber, with the strictly American words and music of "When That Midnight Choo Choo Leaves for Alabam'" warbled by a particularly wide-awake pilot in the next room.
"Waal, I tell yuh, I want to see him right naow. I ain't come two hundred miles for nawthin'. I mean business, I do." The orderly's voice was heard in reply. "I ain't got no time to wait. I want to see yer Chief of Police right naow." Again the orderly's voice could be distinguished. "In court, is he?
The object, however, on which his eyes fixed most intently was the bright spot of color of the orderly's red coat, like a buoy, one might say, against the glimmering river, in the foreground, as he rested on his oars in the glow of the sunset, while the little boat swung idly in the shallows. Not again did either of the chiefs speak.
This was my funeral. All that seemed necessary for a funeral was a corpse, a driver of a cart, and a man with a shovel. I rode up to the orderly's tent and asked him where the mourners were, and he laughed at me. The idea of mourners seemed to be ridiculous. I had never, in all my life, seen so slim a funeral, and it hurt me.
"What have we here?" he demanded, swinging about in his chair and eyeing the two severely. "Prisoners, sir, whom I am instructed to turn over to you," was the orderly's reply. "You are to hold them until you receive further instructions, sir." "Very good," said the chief. "You may go." The orderly saluted, turned on his heel and departed.
They involuntarily paused; then the colonel, taking the candle from the orderly's shaking hand, approached the man and attentively considered him. The long dark beard was the hair of a woman dead. The dead woman clasped in her arms a dead babe. Both were clasped in the arms of the man, pressed against his breast, against his lips.
Probably the dinners had been brought up on a tray, cooling all the way up-stairs and along the corridors; and when brought in, there was the cutting up, in full view of the intended eaters, sometimes on the orderly's own bed, when the tables were occupied.
Almost all his escort had succumbed to the speed, and he was full of the story of his orderly's horse which had done 300 kilometres in four days, and was the only animal which had come through with him, he having changed mounts at Plevlie. We left him and went straight to bed. Just as we were comfortably dozing off, a man burst into the room and demanded "Mike," and said something about a horse.
The barren dignity of Carrick's story had contrasted vividly with the tropical colorings in which its recital had been inspired. Prompted by a kindly interest in his orderly's career and ambitions, he had asked the man as to his past in general and his future in particular.
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