“The cable snapped, and has caught him round the body,” Ellesborough explained.  “Give him this brandy, please, while I try and make out—­”

With skilled and gentle fingers he began to explore the injury.

“A rib broken, I think.”  He looked with anxiety at some blood that had begun to appear on the lips.  “I must go down and get some men and a stretcher.  They won’t know what to do without me.  My second in command is off duty for the day.  Can you look after him while I go?  Awfully sorry to—­”

He gave her a swift, investigating glance.

She interrupted him.

“Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”

He loosened the boy’s collar and very gently tried to ease his position.

“Mamma!” murmured the boy, with the accent of a miserable child in a bad dream.  Ellesborough’s face softened.  He bent over him and said something in German.  Rachel did not understand it—­only the compassionate look in the man’s blue eyes.

“Give him more brandy if you can, and try and keep him still,” said Ellesborough as he rose to his feet.  “I shall be back directly.”

Her glance answered.  By this time there was commotion below, the engine had stopped working and men were running up the hill.  Ellesborough went bounding down the steep slope to meet them.  They turned back with him, and Rachel supposed they had gone to fetch a stretcher, and if possible a doctor, from the small camp hospital which Mrs. Fergusson had pointed out to her near the gate.  Meanwhile, for a few minutes, she was alone with this suffering lad.  Was he fatally hurt—­dying?  She managed to get some brandy down, and then he lay groaning and unconscious, murmuring incoherent words.  She caught “Mamma” again, then “Lisa,” “Hans,” and broken phrases that meant nothing to her.  Was his mind back in some German home, which, perhaps, he would never see again?

All sorts of thoughts passed through her:  vague memories gathered from the newspapers, of what the Germans had done in Belgium and France—­horrible, indescribable things!  Oh, not this boy, surely!  He could not be more than nineteen.  He must have been captured in the fighting of July, perhaps in his first action.  Captain Ellesborough had said to her that there was no fighting spirit among any of the prisoners.  They were thankful to find themselves out of it, “safely captured,” as one of them had had the bravado to say, and with enough to eat.  No doubt this boy had dreamt day and night of peace, and getting back to Germany, to “Mamma” and “Lisa” and “Hans.”  To die, if he was to die, by this clumsy accident, in an enemy country, was hard!

Pity, passionate pity sprang up in her, and it warmed her heart to remember the pity in the face of Captain Ellesborough.  She would have hated him if he had shown any touch of a callous or cruel spirit towards this helpless creature.  But there had been none.

In a few more minutes she was aware of Mrs. Fergusson and Janet climbing rapidly towards her.  And behind them came stretcher-bearers, the captain, and possibly a doctor.