"And who are you?"

"My name is Hugh Renwick, Herr Windt----"

"Renwick--the Englishman----" he heard him gasp.

"Precisely. And if you're going to take this gate, you'd better be in a hurry about it--for the Russians are approaching."

"Then you refuse?"

"Positively."

The Austrian officer saluted, and the two men marched up the causeway.

Marishka, on the other side of the gate, had started up and was regarding him anxiously.

"What you say, Hugh--it can't be that----"

"It's true, dear," he almost shouted. "The Russians. They're coming below there in the valley. I have just seen. The Austrians are in full retreat. The army has been retreating all night, and we thought there were reenforcements. If we can hold out a short while longer, we will be safe. Are you frightened?"

"No. Will they come again, you think?"

"Yes. They'll hardly give up so easily. But keep down, Marishka, further--in the corner. You can see as well. Ah! I wasn't mistaken. Here they come!"

Into the squad of Austrian soldiers advancing Renwick emptied the magazine of his repeating rifle, and took up the other. Two men fell and the remainder paused, only to be brought on by the Austrian officer who led them, sword in hand. Renwick could have shot him easily, but he held his fire and as the mass of men came on he saw them raise their rifles to their shoulders.

"Keep down!" he shouted to Marishka, "they're going to----"

Dust and mortar flew from the ancient gate and behind in the castle, windows crashed.

"You are safe?" he shouted.

"Yes," her voice replied.

"Now watch the gateway."

A plank came over, but profiting by their earlier experience, they shoved it off before it came to rest. Another, a longer one, and another, both of which found lodgment squarely between the gate posts.

Renwick sprang to the loophole; but the volley that followed spattered harmlessly around him.

He was a good shot with a rifle, and aimed deliberately, dropping the first man that put his foot on the hazardous bridge. Gasping with her exertions Marishka pushed the shorter timber over, but the longer one jammed hopelessly against the gate post.

"Hugh," she cried, "we are lost."

But a strange thing happened then. For as the second man approached the bridge and had even put one foot upon it, a shrill call rang out at the other end of the causeway.

"The retreat!" the officer shouted. "To the rear----"

The look of relief upon the face of the brave fellow who was venturing death upon the precarious timber was reflected in Renwick's own heart, for he spared the man who, with a startled glance over his shoulder, presently caught up with the rapidly vanishing Windt. Renwick rushed out and lifting the dangerous timber hurled it down into the gorge.

Then he caught Marishka by the waist and lifted her.

"We're safe, dear--they've gone----" he cried.

She turned one look up at him and then, slowly closing her eyes, sank back helpless in his arms.

"Marishka! It has been too much----"

The blood flowed from a slight cut upon her cheek where she had been struck by a piece of flying stone, but he saw that it was not deep. He laid her gently upon the flagging, and ran to the Hall for water. There he found Ena, crouched in a corner, more dead than alive. But he commanded her to come and bring water and brandy, and she obeyed.

Marishka had only fainted and the brandy soon restored her.

"They've gone?" she asked of him.

"Yes, dear. We're quite safe. Listen. The Russians are driving them down the valley."

He washed the wound in her cheek tenderly.

"It will not scar you, Marishka," he smiled. "But if it does--an honorable scar such as no woman of Austria wears."

She touched it with her fingers and smiled.

"I did not even know----"

And then she saw the blood at his shoulder.

"You're hurt?"

"Only a scratch. It's nothing."

But weak as she was she tore away the sleeve of his shirt, and made him bathe and bind it with linen from her skirt.

"Will the Russians come here, you think?" she asked.

He smiled.

"If they don't come to us," he said soberly, "we will go to them."

She smiled.

"'And your people shall be my people ... '" she murmured softly.

Galenski, Colonel of Russian cavalry, sat on his horse on a slight eminence beside the road which descended from Dukla Pass into the valley beyond, watching through a pair of field glasses the ramparts of an ancient castle perched upon a crag.

Beside him his regiment streamed down the hill at a hand gallop, its gray coats flapping, as it spread out fanwise in the meadow below, its lances lightly poised in pursuit of the fleeing Austrians. As a company captain passed he called out a name, and the officer, with a word to his lieutenant, galloped up and saluted.

"Is not that Schloss Szolnok, Captain Kotchukoff?"

"Yes, sir. You remember--the affair of Baron Neudeck."