Grace rose, and ran to her for protection.
"Take me away!" she cried.
"We shall be killed if we stay here."
She stopped, looking in astonishment at the tall black figure of the nurse, standing immovably by the window.
"Are you made of iron?" she exclaimed.
"Will nothing frighten you?"
Mercy smiled sadly.
"Why should I be afraid of losing my life?" she answered.
"I have nothing worth living for!"
The roar of the cannon shook the cottage for the second time.
A second shell exploded in the courtyard, on the opposite side of the building.
Bewildered by the noise, panic-stricken as the danger from the shells threatened the cottage more and more nearly, Grace threw her arms round the nurse, and clung, in the abject familiarity of terror, to the woman whose hand she had shrunk from touching not five minutes since.
"Where is it safest?" she cried.
"Where can I hide myself?"
"How can I tell where the next shell will fall?" Mercy answered, quietly.
The steady composure of the one woman seemed to madden the other.
Releasing the nurse, Grace looked wildly round for a way of escape from the cottage.
Making first for the kitchen, she was driven back by the clamor and confusion attending the removal of those among the wounded who were strong enough to be placed in the wagon.
A second look round showed her the door leading into the yard.
She rushed to it with a cry of relief.
She had just laid her hand on the lock when the third report of cannon burst over the place.
Starting back a step, Grace lifted her hands mechanically to her ears.
At the same moment the third shell burst through the roof of the cottage, and exploded in the room, just inside the door.
Mercy sprang forward, unhurt, from her place at the window.
The burning fragments of the shell were already firing the dry wooden floor, and in the midst of them, dimly seen through the smoke, lay the insensible body of her companion in the room.
Even at that dreadful moment the nurse's presence of mind did not fail her.
Hurrying back to the place that she had just left, near which she had already noticed the miller's empty sacks lying in a heap, she seized two of them, and, throwing them on the smoldering floor, trampled out the fire.
That done, she knelt by the senseless woman, and lifted her head.
Was she wounded? or dead?
Mercy raised one helpless hand, and laid her fingers on the wrist.
While she was still vainly trying to feel for the beating of the pulse, Surgeon Surville (alarmed for the ladies) hurried in to inquire if any harm had been done.
Mercy called to him to approach.
"I am afraid the shell has struck her," she said, yielding her place to him.
"See if she is badly hurt."
The surgeon's anxiety for his charming patient expressed itself briefly in an oath, with a prodigious emphasis laid on one of the letters in it—the letter R.
"Take off her cloak," he cried, raising his hand to her neck.
"Poor angel!
She has turned in falling; the string is twisted round her throat."
Mercy removed the cloak.
It dropped on the floor as the surgeon lifted Grace in his arms.
"Get a candle," he said, impatiently; "they will give you one in the kitchen."
He tried to feel the pulse: his hand trembled, the noise and confusion in the kitchen bewildered him.
"Just Heaven!" he exclaimed.
"My emotions overpower me!"
Mercy approached him with the candle.
The light disclosed the frightful injury which a fragment of the shell had inflicted on the Englishwoman's head.
Surgeon Surville's manner altered on the instant.
The expression of anxiety left his face; its professional composure covered it suddenly like a mask.
What was the object of his admiration now?
An inert burden in his arms—nothing more.