“My gown must be a sight!” she exclaimed.  “But I do believe you saw a ghost and that he struck you speechless!”

“No!” exploded Bouchard.  “No, I saw nothing!”

“Nothing!” she repeated.  She half turned to go.  He passed by her with the lantern, while she kept to the side of the wall which held the button, covering it with her shadow successfully.  “Nothing!  No bones, no skulls—­not even any anklets fastened by chains to the clammy, wet stones?”

“Yes, just an ordinary set of Middle Age dungeons and some staples in the walls!” he grumbled.

This was no news to her as, with Minna for company, she had explored all the underground passages.

“Wonderful!  I suppose a little courage will always lay ghosts!” She even found it difficult to conceal a note of triumph in her tone, for the button was now well behind them.  “It’s all right, Minna; there aren’t any ghosts!” she called as they entered the sitting-room.  And Minna, in the kitchen, covered her mouth lest she should scream for joy.

“Thank you!” said Bouchard grudgingly as Marta saw him to the door.

“On the contrary, thank you!  It was such fun—­if I hadn’t been so scared,” replied Marta, and their gaze held each other fast in a challenge, hers beaming good nature and his saturnine in its rebuff and a hound-like tenacity of purpose, saying plainly that his suspicions were not yet laid.

When Bouchard returned to his desk he guessed the contents of the note awaiting him, but he took a long time to read its stereotyped expressions in transferring him to perfunctory duty well to the rear of the army.  Then he pulled himself together and, leaden-hearted, settled down to arrange routine details for his departure, while the rest of the staff was immersed in the activity of the preparations for the attack on Engadir.  He knew that he could not sleep if he lay down.  So he spent the night at work.  In the morning his successor, a young man whom he himself had chosen and trained, Colonel Bellini, appeared, and the fallen man received the rising man with forced official courtesy.

“In my own defence and for your aid,” he said, “I show you a copy of what I have just written to General Westerling.”

A brief note it was, in farewell, beginning with conventional thanks for Westerling’s confidence in the past.

“I am punished for being right,” it concluded.  “It is my belief that Miss Galland sends news to the enemy and that she draws it from you without your consciousness of the fact.  I tell you honestly.  Do what you will with me.”

It took more courage than any act of his life for the loyal Bouchard to dare such candor to a superior.  Seeing the patchy, yellow, bloodless face drawn in stiff lines and the abysmal stare of the deep-set eyes in their bony recesses, Bellini was swept with a wave of sympathy.

“Thank you, Bouchard.  You’ve been very fine!” said Bellini as he grasped Bouchard’s hand, which was icy cold.