There was a single chance--a
sort of forlorn hope--and that was to risk fate and make a dash
beneath the sentry's nose for the opposite alley mouth.
"Well, here goes," thought Barney. He had heard that many of the
Austrians were excellent shots. Visions of Beatrice, Nebraska,
swarmed his memory. They were pleasant visions, made doubly alluring
by the thought that the realities of them might never again be for
him.
He turned once more toward the sounds of pursuit--the men upon his
track could not be over a square away--there was not an instant to
be lost. And then from above him, upon the opposite side of the
alley, came a low: "S-s-t!"
Barney looked up. Very dimly he could see the dark outline of a
window some dozen feet from the pavement, and framed within it the
lighter blotch that might have been a human face. Again came the
challenging: "S-s-t!" Yes, there was someone above, signaling to
him.
"S-s-t!" replied Barney. He knew that he had been discovered, and
could think of no better plan for throwing the discoverer off his
guard than to reply.
Then a soft voice floated down to him--a woman's voice!
"Is that you?" The tongue was Serbian. Barney could understand it,
though he spoke it but indifferently.
"Yes," he replied truthfully.
"Thank Heaven!" came the voice from above. "I have been watching
you, and thought you one of the Austrian pigs.
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