Mercy pointed toward the front door of the building.
"In a shed outside the cottage," she answered.
"It is not much; I can do everything for myself if the sentinel will let me pass through the kitchen."
Horace pointed to the paper in her hand.
"You can go where you like now," he said.
"Shall I wait for you here or outside?"
Mercy glanced distrustfully at Ignatius Wetzel.
He was again absorbed in his endless examination of the body on the bed.
If she left him alone with Mr. Holmcroft, there was no knowing what the hateful old man might not say of her.
She answered:
"Wait for me outside, if you please."
The sentinel drew back with a military salute at the sight of the pass.
All the French prisoners had been removed; there were not more than half-a-dozen Germans in the kitchen, and the greater part of them were asleep.
Mercy took Grace Roseberry's clothes from the corner in which they had been left to dry, and made for the shed—a rough structure of wood, built out from the cottage wall.
At the front door she encountered a second sentinel, and showed her pass for the second time.
She spoke to this man, asking him if he understood French.
He answered that he understood a little.
Mercy gave him a piece of money, and said:
"I am going to pack up my luggage in the shed.
Be kind enough to see that nobody disturbs me."
The sentinel saluted, in token that he understood.
Mercy disappeared in the dark interior of the shed.
Left alone with Surgeon Wetzel, Horace noticed the strange old man still bending intently over the English lady who had been killed by the shell.
"Anything remarkable," he asked, "in the manner of that poor creature's death?"
"Nothing to put in a newspaper," retorted the cynic, pursuing his investigations as attentively as ever.
"Interesting to a doctor—eh?" said Horace.
"Yes.
Interesting to a doctor," was the gruff reply.
Horace good-humoredly accepted the hint implied in those words.
He quitted the room by the door leading into the yard, and waited for the charming Englishwoman, as he had been instructed, outside the cottage.
Left by himself, Ignatius Wetzel, after a first cautious look all round him, opened the upper part of Grace's dress, and laid his left hand on her heart.
Taking a little steel instrument from his waistcoat pocket with the other hand, he applied it carefully to the wound, raised a morsel of the broken and depressed bone of the skull, and waited for the result.
"Aha!" he cried, addressing with a terrible gayety the senseless creature under his hands. "The Frenchman says you are dead, my dear—does he?
The Frenchman is a Quack! The Frenchman is an Ass!"
He lifted his head, and called into the kitchen.
"Max!"
A sleepy young German, covered with a dresser's apron from his chin to his feet, drew the curtain, and waited for his instructions.
"Bring me my black bag," said Ignatius Wetzel.
Having given that order, he rubbed his hands cheerfully, and shook himself like a dog.
"Now I am quite happy," croaked the terrible old man, with his fierce eyes leering sidelong at the bed.
"My dear, dead Englishwoman, I would not have missed this meeting with you for all the money I have in the world.
Ha! you infernal French Quack, you call it death, do you?
I call it suspended animation from pressure on the brain!"
Max appeared with the black bag.
Ignatius Wetzel selected two fearful instruments, bright and new, and hugged them to his bosom.
"My little boys," he said, tenderly, as if they were his children; "my blessed little boys, come to work!"
He turned to the assistant.
"Do you remember the battle of Solferino, Max—and the Austrian soldier I operated on for a wound on the head?"
The assistant's sleepy eyes opened wide; he was evidently interested.
"I remember," he said. "I held the candle."