lay down behind a balustrade overlooking the transverse roadway.
Between the pillars of the balustrade he looked right across the
roadway and into the half-open window of the cottage. The room
within was dark save for the glimmer of a mirror on the back wall.

'Kill him I must,' growled the sergeant through his teeth, 'though I
wait the day for it.'

And he waited there, crouching for an hour--for two hours.

He was shifting his cramped attitude a little--a very little--for
about the twentieth time, when a smur of colour showed on the mirror,
and the next instant passed into a dark shadow. It may be that the
marksman within the cottage had spied yet another rifleman in the
street. But the sergeant had noted the reflection in the glass, that
it was red. Two shots rang out together. But the sergeant, after
peering through the parapet, stood upright, walked back across the
roofs, and regained the stairway.

The street was empty. From one of the doorways a voice called to him
to come back. But he walked on, up the street and across the roadway
to a green-painted wicket. It opened upon a garden, and across the
garden he came to a flight of steps with an open door above. Through
this, too, he passed and stared into a small room. On the far side
of it, in an armchair, sat Corporal Sam, leaning back, with a hand to
his breast; and facing him, with a face full of innocent wonder,
stood a child--a small, grave, curly-headed child.