Adventure Magazine Cover, April 1916 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

8 blew until he shook the whole coach, Nancy settled herself as comfortably as possible, and tried to turn a deaf ear to the sheep- dealer, who complained bitterly of the effect the night air on the top of the coach would have upon his rheumatism. She was almost ready, to be rid of him, to surrender him her seat, when he discovered that it was the Brussels coach that he wanted, and went plunging away into the crowd, cursing and groaning. (<A IT WAS long past the hour of de- @ee parture already, but not until both of Nancy’s feet had gone to sleep, and she felt as if a million needles were pricking holes in them, and her spine seemed to have been driven clear through the hard wooden seat, from which most of the stuffing and leather had been rubbed and scraped by a generation of restless trav- elers, did the coach finally get away, heav- ing and lurching over the cobble-stones. As it rumbled through the dim street, past the pastry-cook’s, under whose dark eaves she knew two anxious men watched for her signal, she contrived, by leaning over the fat paunch of the snoring monk, to hang her hat from the window, waving it as long as she thought they were in sight. But wheth- er her father and General Sidney were able to see it in the darkness of the poorly lighted street she had no way of discovering, and was compelled to trust to their eagerness to sharpen their eyes. Soon they were through the city gates, the fortifications were left behind, and the horses strained in their harnesses over the muddy ruts of the road which stretched away head of them through the gloom. The excitement and the novelty of her strange position kept her awake for a time, but even these wore off, and before long she fell into a sleep which not even the snores and wheezes of her two neighbors could dis- turb. She did not awaken until near midnight. The coach had stopped at a roadside inn, a wretched place on the edge of a thick woods. Peering out, and observing that the postil- ions were changing horses, Nancy, bent upon stretching her cramped legs, climbed softly over the monk, who was still gurgling and snoring, his head upon his breast, as if each discordant gasp would be his last. She found herself in a small, bare stable- yard, lighted only by the smoking torches een Adventure of the hostlers, kicking and bullying the fresh horses into their places. The tired moon had wrapped herself for the night in a coverlet of clouds and only a lone star shone low down on the horizon. The whole world seemed soggy and clammy, like a moist pudding laid away in a damp cloth. Seeing that the stable-boys, what with the darkness and the restlessness of the horses, and the cold, which made all their fingers thumbs, were likely to be some time about their task, Nancy turned to the inn and, observing the gleam of a candle through the window, went in and stood be- fore the fire which smoked and smoldered on the hearth and threatened at any minute to give up the unequal and discouraging fight against wet wood. Looking about, she found herself in a low room, and, when her eyes had grown used to the shadows which engulfed it, she made out in the center of the floor a heavy hewn table, on which were the remains of a re- past, which a frowsy scullion-boy was clear- ing away, and which she thought likely had been served to three rough, unkempt men, mud-covered from beard to brogans, who had drawn their bench into a recess at a casement window opening upon the stable- yard, where they sat, heads together, talk- ing in whispers. There was no particular reason why Nancy should have supposed that they were talking about her, save that they did, truly enough, steal a glance at her from time to time. But the conviction that they were discussing her, and very earnestly, too, came upon her with a little sense of apprehension, of what she knew not. Only she was glad when the door opened and the red-headed Irish lad, whom she had seen in the market- square at Lille, came into the room, and beckoned to her with a motion as if to say that the coach was ready to resume its journey. : She had a better opportunity to observe him then, as he stood beneath one of the torches thrust into a hole in the wall by the door, a clean-cut, good-looking lad, despite his ragged clothes and freckles, and the general air of indifference to fate and for- tune which sat upon him; nor did she fail to note, even in that brief second, as she started for the door, that he, too, had sud- denly become an object of the scrutiny of the three men in the corner by the casement. - COMmichoooks CO