Seating himself under the lee of the easternmost rock, Stolz primly opened his sewing-bag and drew forth various torn garments.  The garments were for the most part white, but one or two were of gaudy colors.

By way of precaution, in case of discovery, the spy threaded a needle.  Thus, if any one should chance to see him shake out a garment, preparatory to laying it on his knee and mending it, there could be no reasonable cause for suspicion.  Herr Stolz was nothing if not efficient.

He held up the needle and poked the thread at its eye in truly feminine fashion.

He had just finished this feat of dexterity when he chanced to look up from his work at sound of fast-pattering feet.  Not thirty feet away, charging head on at him, rushed the great brown-and-white collie he supposed had been shot.

With a jump of abject terror, Herr Stolz sprang up.  Mingled with his normal fear of the dog was a tinge of superstitious dread.  He had been so certain the beast was shot!  The doctor had given the order for his killing.  The doctor was a commissioned officer.  Stolz’s German mind could not grasp the possibility of a soldier disobeying an officer’s imperative command.

The collie was upon him by the time the spy gained his feet.  Stolz reached frantically under his dress-folds for the deadly little pistol that he always kept there.  But he was still a novice in the mysteries of feminine apparel.  And, before his fingers could close on the weapon, Bruce’s bared fangs were gleaming at his throat.

Stolz ceased to search for the weapon.  And, as before, he threw up both frantic hands to ward off the furious jaws.

He was barely in time.  Bruce’s white teeth drove deep into the spy’s forearm, and Bruce’s eighty pounds of furry muscular bulk smote Stolz full in the chest.  Down went the spy, under the terrific impact, sprawling wildly on his back, and fighting with both bleeding hands to push back the dog.

Bruce, collie-fashion, did not stick to one grip, but bit and slashed a dozen times in three seconds, tearing and rending his way toward the throat-hold he craved; driving through flesh of hands and of forearms toward his goal.

Like many another German, Stolz was far more adept at causing pain than at enduring it.  Also, from birth, he had had an unconquerable fear of dogs.  His nerves, too, were not yet recovered from Bruce’s attack earlier in the day.  All this, and the spectral suddenness of the onslaught, robbed him of every atom of his usual stony self-control.

Sergeant Mahan was a good soldier.  Yet a minute earlier he had almost ruined his reputation as such.  He had been hard put to it to refrain from leaving the ranks of his drilling company, a furlong from the rocks, and running at record speed toward the boulders.  For he had seen the supposed nurse pass that way.  And almost directly afterward he had seen Bruce follow her thither.  And he could guess what would happen.