I was glad you did not jump on board." He glanced back, timidly, for approbation.
"I am a great coward, Herr Heywood told me so,--but I also stay and help." He steered craftily among the longest and blackest shadows, now jogging in a path, now threading the boundary of a rice-field, or waiting behind trees; and all the time, though devious and artful as a deer-stalker, crept toward the centre of the noise and the leaping flames.

When the quaking shadows grew thin and spare, and the lighted clearings dangerously wide, he swerved to the right through a rolling bank of smoke.

They coughed as they ran.
Once Rudolph paused, with the heat of the fire on his cheeks.
"The nunnery is burning," he said hopelessly.
His guide halted, peered shrewdly, and listened.
"No, they are still shooting," he answered, and limped onward, skirting the uproar.
At last, when by pale stars above the smoke and flame and sparks, Rudolph judged that they were somewhere north of the nunnery, they came stumbling down into a hollow encumbered with round, swollen obstacles.
Like a patch of enormous melons, oil-jars lay scattered.
"Hide here, and wait," commanded Wutzler.

"I will go see." And he flitted off through the smoke.
Smuggled among the oil-jars, Rudolph lay panting.

Shapes of men ran past, another empty jar rolled down beside him, and a stray bullet sang overhead like a vibrating wire.