feet met Antony's eyes, shifted his gaze to the fainting girl on his arm, and thrust his hand into the capacious pocket of his flapping linen coat. 

"Try her with this," he said shortly, "I've got the crowd to settle. Then we'll kill the Frenchy, and then we'll leave!" 

Antony forced the offered flask into the girl's mouth and 29 dragged her backward through the open flap. As the air reached her she gasped and choked, gulping down the strong spirit nervously, then stiffening herself in his arm and adjusting her hat. 

29

"Your town is not dull, at any rate, Mr. Tony!" she observed, and the observation, though a little breathless, was almost perfectly under her control. 

Antony felt his admiration rise into his eyes, nor did he seek to conceal it. 

"You are a brave, sensible--for heaven's sake, what's the matter now?" he cried anxiously, staring at a point behind her. Involuntarily she turned and looked in the same direction. 

The greater part of the crowd had scattered and fled far down the long hill; only a few groups of the most hardy and venturesome among the villagers remained at varying distances from the deserted tent. The most important of these groups now fell apart slightly, disclosing as its centre a large and writhing human figure, prone on the grass. The light box coat, the great goggles, proclaimed this figure the ill-fated mechanician. Even as he sprawled and twisted, the men who surrounded him turned and looked at 30 Antony and his companion, and there was an unpleasant fixity, an unmistakable threatening, in their regard that chilled the young gentleman slightly, though he was utterly at a loss as to its import. Presently one of the men caught his eye and beckoned commandingly. 

30

"They seem to want me over there," he said to the girl, with an attempt at unconcern, "perhaps I'd better step over a moment--I'll return immediately. You don't object?" 

She looked at him with a curious vague smile, then shook her head slowly. This he took for acquiescence to his request, and as she said nothing, he left her and joined the group about the prostrate foreigner. She stared idly at him, but appeared little 31 impressed by his irritated and repeated pantomimic denials of what was, to judge from the faces of the men, a grave charge of some sort. Even when he threw off a hand on his arm and hastened angrily back to her, his 

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