“Lieutenant Richard Mason of Colonel Winchester's staff,” he said, “returning from the pursuit of a fugitive.”
But despite the dark they stared at him very curiously, and when he walked on toward the piazza one of them muttered to the other:
“I guess he must have overtook that fugitive he was chasin'.”
Dick walked up the steps upon the piazza, where some one had lighted a small lamp, near which stood Colonel Winchester and his staff.
“Here's Dick!” exclaimed Warner in a tone of great relief.
“And we thought we had lost him,” said Colonel Winchester, gladness showing in his voice. Then he added: “My God, Dick, what have you been doing to yourself?”
“Yes, what kind of a transformation is this?” added a major. “You've certainly come back with a face very different from the one with which you left us!”
Dick turned fiery red. He suddenly became conscious that he had a left ear of enormous size, purple and swollen, that his left eye was closing fast, that the blood was dripping from cuts on either cheek, that the blood had flowed down the middle of his forehead and had formed a little stalactite on the end of his nose, that his chin had been gashed in five places by a strong fist, and that he had contributed his share to the bloodshed of the war.
“If I didn't know these were modern times,” said Warner, “I'd say that he had just emerged from a sanguinary encounter bare-handed in the Roman arena with a leopard.”
“It was you who gave the alarm of fire, was it not?” asked Colonel Winchester.
“Yes, sir. I saw the man who set the fires and I pursued him through the garden and into the ravine that runs behind it.”
“Your appearance indicates that you overtook him.”
“I did, sir,” he replied. “I know I'm no beauty at present, but neither is he.”
“It looks as if it had been a matter of fists?”
“It was, sir. Both of us fired our pistols, but missed. Then we threw our weapons to one side and clashed. It was a hard and long fight, sir. He hit like a pile driver, and he was as active as a deer. But I was lucky enough to knock him out at last.”
“Then why does your face look like a huge piece of pickled beef?” asked the incorrigible Warner mischievously.
“You wait and I'll make yours look the same!” retorted Dick.