For a moment he recoiled as though he had received a blow between the eyes.
There they sat, little glistening schapskas rakishly tilted over one ear, black-and-white pennons drooping from the lance-points, schabraques edged with yellow--aye, and tunics also, yellow and blue--those were the colours--the colours of the 11th Uhlans.
Then, for the first time, he fully realized his position and what it might mean. Death was the penalty for what he had done--death even though the man he had shot were not dead--death though he had not even hit him. That was not all; it meant death in its most awful form--hanging! For this was the penalty: any civilian, foreigner, franc-soldier, or other unrecognized combatant, firing upon German troops, giving aid to French troops while within the sphere of German influence, by aiding, abetting, signalling, informing, or otherwise, was hung--sometimes with a drum-head court-martial, sometimes without.
Every bit of blood and strength seemed to leave his limbs; he leaned back against the table, cold with fear.
This was the young man who had sat sketching at Sadowa where the needle-guns sent a shower of lead over his rocky observatory; the same who had risked death by fearful mutilation in Oran when he rode back and flung a half-dead Spahi over his own saddle, in the face of a charging, howling hurricane of Kabyle horsemen.
Sabre and lance and bullets were things he understood, but he did not understand ropes.
He could not tell whether the Uhlans had seen him or not; there were lace curtains in the room, but the breeze blew them back from the open window. Had they seen him?
All at once the horses jerked their heads, reared, and wheeled like cattle shying at a passing train, and away went the Uhlans, plunging out into the road. There was a flutter of pennants, a fling or two of horses' heels, a glimmer of yellow, and they were gone.
Utterly unnerved, Jack sank into the arm-chair. What should he do? If he stayed at Morteyn he stood a good chance of hanging. He could not leave his aunt and uncle, nor could he tell them, for the two old people would fall sick with the anxiety. And yet, if he stayed at Morteyn, and the Germans came, it might compromise the whole household and bring destruction to Château and park. He had not thought of that before, but now he remembered also another German rule, inflexible, unvarying. It was this, that in a town or village where the inhabitants resisted by force or injured any German soldier, the village should be burned and the provisions and stock confiscated for the use of King Wilhelm's army.