Near the end of the conservatory he paused and looked back at the house.  Every window was dark.  There must be light inside, but shutters were closed.  His heart throbbed with intense gratitude to Weber.  Without him escape would have been impossible.  He would make his way to the French.  He would find Lannes and together in some way they would rescue Julie, Julie so young and so beautiful, held in the castle of the medieval baron.  In the lowering shadows the house became a castle and Auersperg had always been of the Middle Ages.

The wind freshened and a few drops of rain struck his face.  He stood boldly erect now, unafraid of observation, and picked a way through the mass of broken glass and overturned shrubbery toward the end of the conservatory, seeing beyond it a gleam of water which must be the big fishpond.

He turned to the left and reached the edge of the pond just as four figures stepped from the dusk, their raised rifles pointing at him.  The shock was so great that, driven by some unknown but saving impulse, he threw himself forward into the water just as the soldiers fired.  He heard the four rifles roaring together.  Then he swam below water to the far edge of the pond and came up under the shelter of its circling shrubbery, raising above its surface only enough of his face for breath.

As his eyes cleared he saw the four soldiers standing at the far edge of the pond, looking at the water.  Doubtless they were waiting for his body to reappear, as his action, half fall, half spring, and the roaring of the rifles had been so close together that they seemed a blended movement.

He was trembling all over from intense nervous exertion and excitement, but his mind steadied enough for him to observe the soldiers.  Undoubtedly they were talking together, as he saw them making the gestures of men who speak, but, even had he heard them, he could not have understood their German.  They were watching for his body, and as it did not reappear they might make the circle of the pond looking for it.  He intended, in such an event, to leap out and run, but the elements were intereceding in his favor.  Thunder now preponderated greatly in that rumble on the western horizon, and a blaze of yellow lightning played across the surface of the pond.  It was followed by a rush of rain and the soldiers turned back toward the house, evidently sure that they had not missed.

John drew himself out of the water and climbed up the bank.  His knees gave way under him and he sank to the ground.  Excitement and emotion had been so violent that he was robbed of strength, but the condition lasted only a minute or two.  Then he rose and began to pick a way.

The rain was driving hard, and it had grown so dark that one could not see far.  But he felt that the German sentinels now would seek a little shelter from the wrath of the skies, and keeping in the shelter of a hedge he passed by the stables, where many of the hussars and Uhlans slept, through an orchard, the far side of which was packed with automobiles, and thence into a wood, where he believed at last that he was safe.