Chapter Five.Hard Work.It was like coming back to life. In an instant Pen felt full of energy and excitement once more. The pangs of hunger supplemented those of thirst; and, almost raging against them now, he felt that he must fight, and he rose with an effort to his feet, with the tingling numbness feeling for the moment worse than ever, but only to prick and spur him into action.“Ah!” he ejaculated, “it is like life coming back.” Turning to where his comrade lay breathing heavily, he snatched off the leafy twigs with which he had sheltered him.“Asleep, Punch?” he said; but he was only answered by a low sigh.“Poor boy!” he muttered; “but I must.”He snatched off, full of energy now, his jacket and overcoat, and resumed them. Then, picking up his rifle, he slackened the sling and passed it over his shoulder. In doing this he kicked against the bugle, and slung the cord across the other shoulder. Then, tightening the strap of his shako beneath his chin, he drew a deep breath and looked first in the one direction and then in another in search of the vedettes; but all was darkness for a while, and he was beginning to feel the calm of certainty as regarded their being perfectly free from observation, when, from the nearest point where he had made out the watchers, he suddenly became aware of how close one party was by seeing the faint spark of light which the next minute deepened into a glow, and the wind wafted to his nostrils the odour of coarse, strong tobacco.“Ah, nearer than I thought,” said the lad to himself, and, looking round once more, he made out another faint glow of light; and then, bending over his comrade, he felt about for his hands and glided his own to the boy’s wrists, which felt dank and cold, as he stood thinking for a moment or two of the poor fellow’s condition.“I can’t help it. My only hope is that he is quite insensible to pain. He must be, or he couldn’t sleep like this. It must be done.”Pen’s plans had been carefully laid, and he had not anticipated any difficulty.“It’s only a matter of strength,” he said to himself, “and I feel desperate and strong enough now to do anything.”But it meant several failures, and he was checked by groan after groan before he at last managed to seat himself with his back to the wounded boy, after propping him up against one of the gnarled little oak-trunks amongst which they had been lying.Again and again he had been hindered by the rifle slung across his back. More than once, too, he had despairingly told himself that he must cast it aside, but only to feel that at any cost a soldier must hold to his arms. Then it was the cartouche-box; this, drawn round before him, he was troubled by the position of his haversack, and ready to rage with despair at the difficulties which he had to overcome.At last, though, he sat there shivering, and listening to try and make out whether the poor boy’s moanings had been heard, before drawing a deep breath and beginning to drag the poor fellow’s wrists over his shoulders. Then, making one tremendous heave as he threw himself forward, he had Punch well upon his back and staggered up, finding himself plunging down the slope headlong as he struggled to keep his feet, but in vain; for his balance was gone, and a heavy fall was saved by his going head first into the tangled branches of a scrub oak, where he was brought up short with his shako driven down over his eyes.Penton regained his balance and his breath—to stand listening for some sound of the enemy having taken the alarm, but all was quite still—and, freeing his rifle, he began to use it in the darkness as a staff of support, and to feel his way amongst the shrubs and stones downward always, the butt saving him from more than one fall, for he could not take a step without making sure of a safe place for his feet before he ventured farther.It was a long and tedious task; but in the silence of the night the sound of the rushing water acted as a guide, and by slow degrees, and after many a rest, he felt at last that he must be getting nearer to the river.But, unfortunately, the lower he plunged downwards the deeper grew the obscurity, while the moisture from the rushing stream made the tangled growth more dense. Consequently, he had several times over to stop and fight his way out of some thicket and make a fresh start.At such times he took advantage more than once of some low-growing horizontal oak-boughs, which barred his way and afforded him a resting-place, across which he could lean and make the bough an easy support for his burden.It had seemed but a short distance down to the stream from where he scrutinised his probable path overhead, and doubtless without burden and by the light of day half an hour would have been sufficient to carry him to the river’s brink; but it was in all probability that nearer three hours had elapsed before his farther progress was checked by his finding himself in the midst of a perfect chaos of rocks, just beyond which the water was falling heavily; and, utterly exhausted, he was glad to lower his burden softly down upon a bed of loose shingle and dry sand.“There’s nothing for it but to wait for day,” he said half-aloud, and then—after, as best he could in the darkness, placing the wounded boy in a comfortable position and again covering him with his outer garments—he began to feel his way cautiously onward till he found that every time and in whatever direction he thrust down the butt of his rifle it plashed into rushing water which came down so heavily that it splashed up again into his face, and in spite of the darkness he could feel that he was standing somewhere at the foot of a fall where a heavy volume of water was being dashed down from a considerable height.Pen’s first proceeding now was to go down upon his knees as close to the torrent as he could get, and there refill his water-bottle, before (after securing it) he leaned forward and lowered his face until his lips touched the flowing water, and he drank till his terrible thirst was assuaged.This great desire satisfied, he rose again, to stand listening to the heavy rush and roar of the falls, which were evidently close at hand, and whose proximity produced a strange feeling of awe, suggestive, as it were, of a terrible danger which paralysed him for the time being and held him motionless lest at his next step he should be swept away.The feeling passed off directly as the thought came that his comrade was insensible and dependent upon him for help; and it struck him now that he might not be able in that thick darkness to find the spot where he had left him.This idea came upon him with such force as he made a step first in one direction and then in another that he began to lose nerve.“Oh, it won’t do to play the coward now,” he muttered. “I must find him—I must! I must try till I do.”But there is something terribly confusing in thick darkness. It is as if a natural instinct is awakened that compels the one who is lost to go wrong; and before Pen Gray had correctly retraced his steps from where he had lain down to drink he had probably passed close to his insensible companion at least a score of times, while the sense of confusion, the nearness of danger and a terrible death, grew and grew till in utter despair and exhaustion he staggered a few steps and sank down almost breathless.“It is no good,” he groaned to himself. “I can do no more. I must wait till daylight.”As he lay stretched out upon his back, panting heavily from weakness, it seemed to him that the roar of the falling water had redoubled, and the fancy came upon him that there was a tone of mocking triumph over his helplessness. In fact, the exertion which he had been called upon to make, the want of sleep, and possibly the exposure during many hours to the burning sun, had slightly affected his brain, so that his wild imagination conjured up non-existent dangers till all was blank, for he sank into the deep sleep of exhaustion, and lay at last open-eyed, wondering, and asking himself whether the foaming water that was plunging down a few yards away was part of some dream, in which he was lying in a fairy-like glen gazing at a rainbow, a little iris that spanned in a bridge of beauty the sparkling water, coming and going as the soft breeze rose and fell, while the sun sent shafts of light through the dew-sprinkled leaves of the many shrubs and trees that overhung the flowing water and nearly filled the glen.Sleep still held him in its slackening grasp, and he lay motionless, enjoying the pleasant sense of coolness and rest till his attention was caught by a black-and-white bird which suddenly came into sight by alighting upon a rock in the midst of the rushing stream.It was one of many scattered here and there, and so nearly covered by the water that every now and then, as the black-and-white bird hurried here and there, its legs were nearly covered; but it seemed quite at home, and hurried away, wading easily and seldom using its wings, till all at once, as Pen watched, he saw the little creature take a step, give its tail a flick, and disappear, not diving but regularly walking into deep water, to reappear a few yards away, stepping on to another rock, running here and there for a few moments, and again disappearing in the most unaccountable way.“It is all a dream,” thought Pen. “Ducks dive, but no bird could walk under water like that. Why, it’s swimming and using its wings like a fish’s fins. I must be asleep.”At that moment the bird stepped on to another rock, to stand heel-deep; and as it was passing out of sight with a quick fluttering of its wings, which did not seem to be wetted in the least, Pen made an effort to raise himself on his elbow, felt a dull, aching sensation of strain, and lost sight of the object that had caught his attention. He found, however, that it was no dream, for across the little torrent and high up the steep, precipitous bank before him he could see a goat contentedly browsing upon the tender green twigs of the bushes; while, at his next movement, as he tried to raise himself a little more, there within touch, and half behind him, lay the companion whose very existence had been blotted out of his mind; and he uttered a cry of joy—or rather felt that he did, for the sound was covered by the roar of the falling water—and dragged himself painfully to where he could lay one hand upon the bugle-boy’s breast.“Why, Punch,” he felt that he cried, as the events of the past hours came back with a rush, “I thought I’d lost you. No, I fancied—I— Here, am I going mad?”He felt that he shouted that question aloud, and then, sending a pang through his strained shoulder, he clapped his hands to his forehead and looked down wildly at the still insensible boy.“Here, Punch! Punch!” he repeated inaudibly. “Speak—answer! I—oh, how stupid!” he muttered—“I am awake, and it is the roar of that water that seems to sweep away every other sound. Yes, that must be it;” for just then he saw that the goat had raised its head as it gazed across at him, and stretched out its neck.“Why, it’s bleating,” he said to himself, “and I can’t hear a sound.”The efforts he had made seemed to enable him to think more clearly, and his next act was to rise to his knees stiffly and painfully, and then begin to work his joints a little before bending over his companion and shrinkingly laying his hand upon his breast.This had the desired effect—one which sent a strange feeling of relief through the young private’s breast—for the wondering, questioning eyes he now met looked bright and intelligent, making him bend lower till he could speak loudly in the boy’s ear the simple question, “How are you?”He could hardly hear the words himself, but that they had been heard by him for whom they were intended was evident, for Punch’s lips moved in reply, and the next moment, to Pen’s delight, he raised one hand to his parched lips and made a sign as of drinking.“Ah, you are better!” cried Pen excitedly, and this time he felt that he almost heard his own words above the deep-toned, musical roar.
It was like coming back to life. In an instant Pen felt full of energy and excitement once more. The pangs of hunger supplemented those of thirst; and, almost raging against them now, he felt that he must fight, and he rose with an effort to his feet, with the tingling numbness feeling for the moment worse than ever, but only to prick and spur him into action.
“Ah!” he ejaculated, “it is like life coming back.” Turning to where his comrade lay breathing heavily, he snatched off the leafy twigs with which he had sheltered him.
“Asleep, Punch?” he said; but he was only answered by a low sigh.
“Poor boy!” he muttered; “but I must.”
He snatched off, full of energy now, his jacket and overcoat, and resumed them. Then, picking up his rifle, he slackened the sling and passed it over his shoulder. In doing this he kicked against the bugle, and slung the cord across the other shoulder. Then, tightening the strap of his shako beneath his chin, he drew a deep breath and looked first in the one direction and then in another in search of the vedettes; but all was darkness for a while, and he was beginning to feel the calm of certainty as regarded their being perfectly free from observation, when, from the nearest point where he had made out the watchers, he suddenly became aware of how close one party was by seeing the faint spark of light which the next minute deepened into a glow, and the wind wafted to his nostrils the odour of coarse, strong tobacco.
“Ah, nearer than I thought,” said the lad to himself, and, looking round once more, he made out another faint glow of light; and then, bending over his comrade, he felt about for his hands and glided his own to the boy’s wrists, which felt dank and cold, as he stood thinking for a moment or two of the poor fellow’s condition.
“I can’t help it. My only hope is that he is quite insensible to pain. He must be, or he couldn’t sleep like this. It must be done.”
Pen’s plans had been carefully laid, and he had not anticipated any difficulty.
“It’s only a matter of strength,” he said to himself, “and I feel desperate and strong enough now to do anything.”
But it meant several failures, and he was checked by groan after groan before he at last managed to seat himself with his back to the wounded boy, after propping him up against one of the gnarled little oak-trunks amongst which they had been lying.
Again and again he had been hindered by the rifle slung across his back. More than once, too, he had despairingly told himself that he must cast it aside, but only to feel that at any cost a soldier must hold to his arms. Then it was the cartouche-box; this, drawn round before him, he was troubled by the position of his haversack, and ready to rage with despair at the difficulties which he had to overcome.
At last, though, he sat there shivering, and listening to try and make out whether the poor boy’s moanings had been heard, before drawing a deep breath and beginning to drag the poor fellow’s wrists over his shoulders. Then, making one tremendous heave as he threw himself forward, he had Punch well upon his back and staggered up, finding himself plunging down the slope headlong as he struggled to keep his feet, but in vain; for his balance was gone, and a heavy fall was saved by his going head first into the tangled branches of a scrub oak, where he was brought up short with his shako driven down over his eyes.
Penton regained his balance and his breath—to stand listening for some sound of the enemy having taken the alarm, but all was quite still—and, freeing his rifle, he began to use it in the darkness as a staff of support, and to feel his way amongst the shrubs and stones downward always, the butt saving him from more than one fall, for he could not take a step without making sure of a safe place for his feet before he ventured farther.
It was a long and tedious task; but in the silence of the night the sound of the rushing water acted as a guide, and by slow degrees, and after many a rest, he felt at last that he must be getting nearer to the river.
But, unfortunately, the lower he plunged downwards the deeper grew the obscurity, while the moisture from the rushing stream made the tangled growth more dense. Consequently, he had several times over to stop and fight his way out of some thicket and make a fresh start.
At such times he took advantage more than once of some low-growing horizontal oak-boughs, which barred his way and afforded him a resting-place, across which he could lean and make the bough an easy support for his burden.
It had seemed but a short distance down to the stream from where he scrutinised his probable path overhead, and doubtless without burden and by the light of day half an hour would have been sufficient to carry him to the river’s brink; but it was in all probability that nearer three hours had elapsed before his farther progress was checked by his finding himself in the midst of a perfect chaos of rocks, just beyond which the water was falling heavily; and, utterly exhausted, he was glad to lower his burden softly down upon a bed of loose shingle and dry sand.
“There’s nothing for it but to wait for day,” he said half-aloud, and then—after, as best he could in the darkness, placing the wounded boy in a comfortable position and again covering him with his outer garments—he began to feel his way cautiously onward till he found that every time and in whatever direction he thrust down the butt of his rifle it plashed into rushing water which came down so heavily that it splashed up again into his face, and in spite of the darkness he could feel that he was standing somewhere at the foot of a fall where a heavy volume of water was being dashed down from a considerable height.
Pen’s first proceeding now was to go down upon his knees as close to the torrent as he could get, and there refill his water-bottle, before (after securing it) he leaned forward and lowered his face until his lips touched the flowing water, and he drank till his terrible thirst was assuaged.
This great desire satisfied, he rose again, to stand listening to the heavy rush and roar of the falls, which were evidently close at hand, and whose proximity produced a strange feeling of awe, suggestive, as it were, of a terrible danger which paralysed him for the time being and held him motionless lest at his next step he should be swept away.
The feeling passed off directly as the thought came that his comrade was insensible and dependent upon him for help; and it struck him now that he might not be able in that thick darkness to find the spot where he had left him.
This idea came upon him with such force as he made a step first in one direction and then in another that he began to lose nerve.
“Oh, it won’t do to play the coward now,” he muttered. “I must find him—I must! I must try till I do.”
But there is something terribly confusing in thick darkness. It is as if a natural instinct is awakened that compels the one who is lost to go wrong; and before Pen Gray had correctly retraced his steps from where he had lain down to drink he had probably passed close to his insensible companion at least a score of times, while the sense of confusion, the nearness of danger and a terrible death, grew and grew till in utter despair and exhaustion he staggered a few steps and sank down almost breathless.
“It is no good,” he groaned to himself. “I can do no more. I must wait till daylight.”
As he lay stretched out upon his back, panting heavily from weakness, it seemed to him that the roar of the falling water had redoubled, and the fancy came upon him that there was a tone of mocking triumph over his helplessness. In fact, the exertion which he had been called upon to make, the want of sleep, and possibly the exposure during many hours to the burning sun, had slightly affected his brain, so that his wild imagination conjured up non-existent dangers till all was blank, for he sank into the deep sleep of exhaustion, and lay at last open-eyed, wondering, and asking himself whether the foaming water that was plunging down a few yards away was part of some dream, in which he was lying in a fairy-like glen gazing at a rainbow, a little iris that spanned in a bridge of beauty the sparkling water, coming and going as the soft breeze rose and fell, while the sun sent shafts of light through the dew-sprinkled leaves of the many shrubs and trees that overhung the flowing water and nearly filled the glen.
Sleep still held him in its slackening grasp, and he lay motionless, enjoying the pleasant sense of coolness and rest till his attention was caught by a black-and-white bird which suddenly came into sight by alighting upon a rock in the midst of the rushing stream.
It was one of many scattered here and there, and so nearly covered by the water that every now and then, as the black-and-white bird hurried here and there, its legs were nearly covered; but it seemed quite at home, and hurried away, wading easily and seldom using its wings, till all at once, as Pen watched, he saw the little creature take a step, give its tail a flick, and disappear, not diving but regularly walking into deep water, to reappear a few yards away, stepping on to another rock, running here and there for a few moments, and again disappearing in the most unaccountable way.
“It is all a dream,” thought Pen. “Ducks dive, but no bird could walk under water like that. Why, it’s swimming and using its wings like a fish’s fins. I must be asleep.”
At that moment the bird stepped on to another rock, to stand heel-deep; and as it was passing out of sight with a quick fluttering of its wings, which did not seem to be wetted in the least, Pen made an effort to raise himself on his elbow, felt a dull, aching sensation of strain, and lost sight of the object that had caught his attention. He found, however, that it was no dream, for across the little torrent and high up the steep, precipitous bank before him he could see a goat contentedly browsing upon the tender green twigs of the bushes; while, at his next movement, as he tried to raise himself a little more, there within touch, and half behind him, lay the companion whose very existence had been blotted out of his mind; and he uttered a cry of joy—or rather felt that he did, for the sound was covered by the roar of the falling water—and dragged himself painfully to where he could lay one hand upon the bugle-boy’s breast.
“Why, Punch,” he felt that he cried, as the events of the past hours came back with a rush, “I thought I’d lost you. No, I fancied—I— Here, am I going mad?”
He felt that he shouted that question aloud, and then, sending a pang through his strained shoulder, he clapped his hands to his forehead and looked down wildly at the still insensible boy.
“Here, Punch! Punch!” he repeated inaudibly. “Speak—answer! I—oh, how stupid!” he muttered—“I am awake, and it is the roar of that water that seems to sweep away every other sound. Yes, that must be it;” for just then he saw that the goat had raised its head as it gazed across at him, and stretched out its neck.
“Why, it’s bleating,” he said to himself, “and I can’t hear a sound.”
The efforts he had made seemed to enable him to think more clearly, and his next act was to rise to his knees stiffly and painfully, and then begin to work his joints a little before bending over his companion and shrinkingly laying his hand upon his breast.
This had the desired effect—one which sent a strange feeling of relief through the young private’s breast—for the wondering, questioning eyes he now met looked bright and intelligent, making him bend lower till he could speak loudly in the boy’s ear the simple question, “How are you?”
He could hardly hear the words himself, but that they had been heard by him for whom they were intended was evident, for Punch’s lips moved in reply, and the next moment, to Pen’s delight, he raised one hand to his parched lips and made a sign as of drinking.
“Ah, you are better!” cried Pen excitedly, and this time he felt that he almost heard his own words above the deep-toned, musical roar.
Chapter Six.Pen’s Patient.Punch’s appealing sign was sufficient to chase away the imaginative notions that had beset Pen’s awakening. His hand went at once to the water-bottle slung to his side, and, as he held the mouth to his comrade’s lips and forgot the pain he suffered in his strained and stiffening joints, he watched with a feeling of pleasure the avidity with which the boy drank; and as he saw the strange bird flit by once more he recalled having heard of such a bird living in the west country.“Yes,” he said to himself, “I remember now—the dipper. Busy after water-beetles and perhaps after tiny fish.—You are better, Punch, or you wouldn’t drink like that;” and he carefully lowered the boy’s head as he ceased drinking. “Yes, and though I can’t hear you, you have come to your senses again, or you would not look at me like that.—Ah, I forgot all about them!” For a sound other than that produced by the falling waters came faintly to his ear. It was from somewhere far above, and echoed twice. “Yes, I had forgotten all about them.”He began looking anxiously about him, taking in the while that he was close to the river where it ran in a deep, precipitous gully; and as he looked up now to right and then to left, eagerly and searchingly, for the danger that he knew could not be far away, his eyes ranged through densely wooded slopes, lit up here and there by the morning sunshine, and always sweeping the sides of the valley in search of the vedettes, but without avail, not even the rugged mule-path that ran along the side being visible.“They are not likely to see us here,” Pen said to himself, “and they can’t have seen me coming down. Oh, what a job it was! I feel as if I must have been walking in my sleep half the time, and I am so stiff I can hardly move. But I did it, and we must be safe if we can keep out of sight; and that ought to be easy, for they are not likely to come down here. Now, what’s to be done?”That was a hard question to answer; but growing once more full of energy now that he was satisfied that there was no immediate danger, Pen stepped back lamely, as if every muscle were strained, to his companion’s side, to be greeted with a smile and a movement of the boy’s lips.“Now, let’s see to your wound,” he said, with his lips to the boy’s ear; and he passed one hand under Punch’s wounded shoulder to try and turn him over. This time, as Punch’s lips parted and his face grew convulsed with pain, Pen’s ears mastered the roar, and he heard the sufferer’s cry.“Hurt you too much?” he said, as he once more put his lips to the boy’s ear.The answer was a nod.“Well,” thought Pen, “he must be better, so I’ll let him be; but we can’t stop here. I must try and get him through the trees and away from this horrible noise. But I can’t do it now. At least, I don’t think I can. Then, what’s next?”The inaudible reply to the question came from somewhere inside, and he bent closer over Punch once more.“Aren’t you hungry?” he roared in his ear.The boy shook his head.“Well, I am,” shouted Pen.—“Oh, how stupid! This is like telling the enemy where we are, if they are anywhere within hearing. Hullo, what does this mean?” For he suddenly caught sight of the goat springing from stone to stone low down the stream as if coming to their side of the rushing water; and with the thought filling his mind that a tame goat like this must have an owner who was more likely to be an enemy of strangers than a friend, Pen began searching the rugged slopes on both sides of the river, but in vain. The goat, which had crossed, was now coming slowly towards them, appearing to be quite alone, though soon proving itself to be quite accustomed to the presence of human beings, for it ended by trotting over the sand and shingle at the river’s edge till it had approached them quite closely, to stand bleating at them, doubtless imploringly, though no sound was heard.This lasted for a few minutes, and then the goat moved away, passing Punch, and disappearing upward through the dense growth, and apparently making its way up by the side of the great fall.No sooner was it out of sight than a thought struck Pen; and, making a sign to his companion that meant “I won’t be long,” he shouldered his rifle and began to climb upwards in the direction taken by the goat.He was beginning to regret now that he had not started sooner, for there was no sign of the little beast, and he was about to turn when, just to his right, he noted faint signs of what seemed to be a slightly used track which was easy to follow, and, stepping out, he observed the trees were more open, and at the end of a few minutes he found himself level with the top of the falls, where the river was gliding along in a deep, glassy sheet before making its plunge over the smooth, worn rocks into a basin below.He had just grasped this when he saw that the faint track bore off to the right, and caught sight of the goat again moving amongst the trees, and for the next few minutes he had no difficulty in keeping it in sight, and, in addition, finding that it was making for what seemed to be the edge of another stream which issued from a patch of woodland on its way to the main torrent.“I must get him here if I can,” thought Pen, for the roar of the falling waters was subdued into a gentle murmur, and to his surprise he caught sight of a shed-like building amongst the trees, fenced in by piled-up pieces of stone evidently taken from the smaller stream which he approached; and it was plain that this was the spot for which the goat had been making.The young rifleman stopped short, trying to make out whether the place was inhabited; but he could see no sign save that the goat was making for the stone fence, on to which the active beast leaped, balanced itself carefully for a few moments, and then sprang down on the other side, to be greeted by a burst of bleating that came from apparently two of its kind within.Pen stood screened by the trees for a time, fully expecting to see some occupant of the hut make his appearance; but the bleating ceased directly, and, approaching carefully, the young private stood at last by the rough stone wall, looking down on a scene which fully explained the reason for the goat’s visit.She had returned to her kids; and after climbing the wall a very little search showed the visitor that the goat and her young ones were the sole occupants of the deserted place.It was the rough home of a peasant who had apparently forsaken it upon the approach of the French soldiery. Everything was of the simplest kind; but situated as Pen Gray was it presented itself in a palatial guise, for there was everything that he could wish for at a time like that.As before said, it was a shed-like structure; but there was bed and fireplace, a pile of wood outside the door, and, above all, a roof to cover those who sought shelter.“Yes, I must bring him here somehow,” thought Pen as he caught sight of a cleanly scrubbed pail and a tin or two hanging upon nails in the wall. But he saw far more than this, for his senses were sharpened by hunger; and with a smile of satisfaction he hurried out, noting as he passed them that the kids, keen of appetite, were satisfying their desire for food; and, hurrying onwards, he made his way back to where he had left his companion lying in the dry, sandy patch of shingle; and some hours of that forenoon were taken up in the painful task of bearing the wounded lad by slow degrees to where, after much painful effort, they could both look down upon the nearly hidden shed.“How are you now, Punch?” asked Pen, turning his head upwards.There was no reply.“Why, Punch,” cried Pen, “you are not asleep, are you?”“Asleep!” said the boy bitterly; and then, in a faint whisper, “set me down.”Pen took a step forward to where he could take hold of a stunted oak-bough whose bark felt soft and strange; and, holding tightly with one hand, he held his burden with the other while he sank slowly, the branch bending the while till he was kneeling. Then he slid his load down amongst the undergrowth and quickly opened his water-bottle and held it to the boy’s lips.“Feel faint, lad?” he said.Again there was no answer; but Punch swallowed a few mouthfuls.“Ah, that’s better,” he said. “Head’s swimming.”“Well, you shall lie still for a few minutes till you think you can bear it, and then I want you to get down to that hut.”Punch looked up at him with misty eyes, wonderingly.“Hut!” he said faintly. “What hut?”“The one I told you about. You will be able to see it when you are better. There’s a rough bed there where you will be able to lie and rest till your wound heals.”“Hut!”“Oh, never mind now. Will you have some more water?”The boy shook his head.“Not going to die, am I?” he said feebly.“Die! No!” cried Pen, with his heart sinking. “A chap like you isn’t going to die over a bit of a wound.”“Don’t,” said the boy faintly, but with a tone of protest in his words. “Don’t gammon a fellow! I am not going to mind if I am. Our chaps don’t make a fuss about it when their time comes.”“No,” said Pen sharply; “but your time hasn’t come yet.”The boy looked up at him with a peculiar smile.“Saying that to comfort a fellow,” he almost whispered; “only, I say, comrade, you did stick to me, and you won’t—won’t—”“Won’t what?” said Pen sharply. “Leave you now? Is it likely?”“Not a bit yet,” said the poor fellow faintly; “but I didn’t mean that.”“Then what did you mean?” cried Pen wonderingly.The poor lad made a snatch at his companion’s arm, and tried to draw him down.“What is it?” said Pen anxiously now, for he was startled by the look in the boy’s eyes.“Want to whisper,” came in a broken voice.“No; you can’t have anything to whisper now,” said Pen. “There, let me give you a little more water.”The boy shook his head.“Want to whisper,” he murmured in a harsh, low voice.“Well, what is it? But you had better not. Shut your eyes and have a bit of a nap till you are rested and the faintness has gone. I shall be rested, too, then, and I can get you down into the hut, where I tell you there’s a bed, and, better still, Punch, a draught of sweet warm milk.”“Gammon!” said the boy again; and he hung more heavily upon Pen’s arm.—“Want to whisper.”“Well, what is it?” said Pen, trying hard to master the feeling of despair that was creeping over him.“Them wolves!” whispered the boy. “Don’t let them get me, comrade, when I’m gone.”“You shut your eyes and go to sleep,” cried Pen angrily.“No,” said the boy, speaking more strongly now. “I aren’t a baby, and I know what I’m saying. You tell me you won’t let them have me, and then I will go to sleep; and then if I don’t wake up no more—”“What!” cried Pen, speaking with a simulated anger, “you won’t be such a coward as to go and leave me all alone here?”The boy started; his eyes brightened a little, and he gazed half-wonderingly in his companion’s face.“I—I didn’t think of that, comrade,” he faltered. “I was thinking I was going like some of our poor chaps; but I don’t want to shirk. There, I’ll try not.”“Of course you will,” said Pen harshly. “Now then, try and have a nap.”The boy closed his eyes, and in less than a minute he was breathing steadily and well, but evidently suffering now and then in his sleep, for the hand that clasped Pen’s gave a sudden jerk at intervals.Quite an hour, during which the watcher did not stir, till there was a sharper twitch and the boy’s eyes opened, to look wonderingly in his companion’s as if he could not recall where he was.“Have a little water now, Punch?”“Drop,” he said; but the drop proved to be a thirsty draught, and he spoke quite in his senses now as he put a brief question.“Is it far?” he said.“To the hut? No. Do you think you can bear me to get you on my back again?”“Yes. Going to. Look sharp!”But as soon as the boy felt his companion take hold of his hand after restopping the water-bottle, Punch whispered, “Stop!”“What is it? Would you like to wait a little longer?”“No. Give me a bullet out of a cartridge.”“A bullet? What for?”“To bite,” said the boy with a grim smile.Pen hesitated for a moment in doubt, looking in the boy’s smiling eyes the while. Then, as a flash of recollection of stories he had heard passed through his mind, he hastily drew a cartridge from his box, broke the little roll open, scattering the powder and setting the bullet free before passing it to his companion, who nodded in silence as he seized the piece of lead between his teeth. Then, nodding again, he raised one hand, which Pen took, and seizing one of the branches of the gnarled tree he bent it down till he got it close to his companion, and bade him hold on with all his might.Punch’s fingers closed tightly upon the bough, which acted like a spring and helped to raise its holder sufficiently high for Pen to get him once more upon his shoulders, which he had freed from straps thrown down beside his rifle.“Try and bear it,” he panted, as he heard the low, hissing breath from the poor fellow’s lips, and felt him quiver and wince. “I know it’s bad,” he added encouragingly, “but it won’t take me long.”It did not, for in a very few minutes he had reached the rough stone wall, to which he shifted his burden, stood for a few moments panting, and then climbed over, took the sufferer in his arms, and staggered into the waiting shelter, where the next minute Punch was lying insensible upon the bed.“Ha!” ejaculated Pen as he passed the back of his hand across his streaming forehead.This suggested another action, but it was the palm of his hand that he laid across his companion’s brow.“All wet!” he muttered. “He can’t be very feverish for the perspiration to come like that.”Then he started violently, for a shadow crossed the open door, and he involuntarily threw up one hand to draw his slung rifle from his shoulder, and then his teeth snapped together.There was no rifle there. It was lying with his cartouche-box right away by the stunted oak, as he mentally called the cork-tree.The next minute he was breathing freely, for the deep-toned bleat of the goat arose, and he looked out, to see that it was answerable for the shadow.“Ah, you will have to pay for this,” he muttered, as he started to run to where his weapon lay, his mind full now of thoughts that in his efforts over his comrade had been absent.He was full of expectation that one or other of the vedettes might have caught sight of him bearing his load to the hut; and, with the full determination to get his rifle and hurry back to defend himself and his companion for as long as the cartridges held out, he started with a run up the slope, which proved to be only the stagger of one who was utterly exhausted, and degenerated almost into a crawl.He was back at last, to find that Punch had not moved, but seemed to be sleeping heavily as he lay upon his sound shoulder; and, satisfied by this, Pen laid his rifle and belts across the foot of the bed and drew a deep breath.“I can’t help it,” he nearly groaned. “It isn’t selfish; but if I don’t have something I can do no more.”Then, strangely enough, he uttered a mocking laugh as he stepped to a rough shelf and took a little pail-like vessel with one stave prolonged into a handle from the place where it had been left clean by the last occupant of the hut, and as he stepped with it to the open door something within it rattled.He looked down at it in surprise and wonder, and it was some moments before he grasped the fact that the piece of what resembled blackened clay was hard, dry cake.“Ah!” he half-shouted as he raised it to his lips and tried to bite off a piece, but only to break off what felt like wood, which refused to crumble but gradually began to soften.Then, smiling grimly, he thrust the cake within his jacket and stepped out, forgetting his pain and stiffness, to find to his dismay that there was no sign of the goat.“How stupid!” he muttered the next minute. “My head won’t go. I can’t think.” And, recalling the goat’s former visit to the rough shelter, he hurried to where he had been a witness of its object, and to his great delight found the animal standing with half-closed eyes nibbling at some of the plentiful herbage while one of its kids was partaking of its evening meal.Pen advanced cautiously with the little wooden vessel, ready to seize the animal by one of its horns if it attempted to escape, as it turned sharply and stared at him in wonder; but it only sniffed as if in recognition at the little pail, and resumed its browsing. But the kid was disposed to resent the interruption of the stranger, and some little force had to be used to thrust it away, returning again and again to begin to make some pretence of butting at the intruder.Pen laughed aloud at the absurdity of his task as he finally got rid of the little animal, and made his first essay at milking, finding to his great delight that he was successful, while the goat-mother took it all as a matter of course, and did not move while her new friend refreshed himself with a hearty draught of the contents of the little pail; and then, snatching at a happy thought, drew the hardened cake from his breast and placed it so that it could soak up the soft warm milk which flowed into the vessel.“Ah!” sighed the young soldier, “who’d have thought that taking the king’s shilling would bring a fellow to this? Now for poor Punch. Well, we sha’n’t starve to-night.”Once more as he turned from the goat the thought assailed him that one of the vedettes might be in sight; but all was still and beautiful as he stepped back slowly, eating with avidity portions of the gradually softening black-bread, and feeling the while that life and hope and strength were gradually coming back.“Now for poor Punch!” he muttered again; and, entering the rough shelter once more, he stood looking down upon the wounded boy, who was sleeping heavily, so soundly that Pen felt that it would be a cruelty to rouse him. So, partaking sparingly of his novel meal, he placed a part upon a stool within reach of the rough pallet.“Wounded men don’t want food,” he muttered. “It’s Nature’s way of keeping off fever; and I must keep watch again, and give him a little milk when he wakes. Yes, when he wakes—when he wakes,” he muttered, as he settled himself upon the earthen floor within touch of his sleeping comrade. “Mustn’t close the door,” he continued, with a little laugh, “for there doesn’t seem to be one; and, besides, it would make the place dark. Why, there’s a star peeping out over the shoulder of the mountain, and that soft, low, deep hum is the falling water. Why, that must be the star I used to see at home in the old days; and, oh, how beautiful and restful everything seems! But I mustn’t go to sleep.—Are you asleep, Punch?” he whispered softly. “Poor fellow! That’s right. Sleep and Nature will help you with your wound; but I must keep awake. It would never do for you to rouse up and find me fast. No,” he half-sighed. “Poor lad, you mustn’t go yet where so many other poor fellows have gone. A boy like you! Well! It’s the—fortune—fortune—of war—and—and—”Nature would take no denial. Pen Gray drew one long, deep, restful breath as if wide-awake, and then slowly and as if grudgingly respired.Fast asleep.
Punch’s appealing sign was sufficient to chase away the imaginative notions that had beset Pen’s awakening. His hand went at once to the water-bottle slung to his side, and, as he held the mouth to his comrade’s lips and forgot the pain he suffered in his strained and stiffening joints, he watched with a feeling of pleasure the avidity with which the boy drank; and as he saw the strange bird flit by once more he recalled having heard of such a bird living in the west country.
“Yes,” he said to himself, “I remember now—the dipper. Busy after water-beetles and perhaps after tiny fish.—You are better, Punch, or you wouldn’t drink like that;” and he carefully lowered the boy’s head as he ceased drinking. “Yes, and though I can’t hear you, you have come to your senses again, or you would not look at me like that.—Ah, I forgot all about them!” For a sound other than that produced by the falling waters came faintly to his ear. It was from somewhere far above, and echoed twice. “Yes, I had forgotten all about them.”
He began looking anxiously about him, taking in the while that he was close to the river where it ran in a deep, precipitous gully; and as he looked up now to right and then to left, eagerly and searchingly, for the danger that he knew could not be far away, his eyes ranged through densely wooded slopes, lit up here and there by the morning sunshine, and always sweeping the sides of the valley in search of the vedettes, but without avail, not even the rugged mule-path that ran along the side being visible.
“They are not likely to see us here,” Pen said to himself, “and they can’t have seen me coming down. Oh, what a job it was! I feel as if I must have been walking in my sleep half the time, and I am so stiff I can hardly move. But I did it, and we must be safe if we can keep out of sight; and that ought to be easy, for they are not likely to come down here. Now, what’s to be done?”
That was a hard question to answer; but growing once more full of energy now that he was satisfied that there was no immediate danger, Pen stepped back lamely, as if every muscle were strained, to his companion’s side, to be greeted with a smile and a movement of the boy’s lips.
“Now, let’s see to your wound,” he said, with his lips to the boy’s ear; and he passed one hand under Punch’s wounded shoulder to try and turn him over. This time, as Punch’s lips parted and his face grew convulsed with pain, Pen’s ears mastered the roar, and he heard the sufferer’s cry.
“Hurt you too much?” he said, as he once more put his lips to the boy’s ear.
The answer was a nod.
“Well,” thought Pen, “he must be better, so I’ll let him be; but we can’t stop here. I must try and get him through the trees and away from this horrible noise. But I can’t do it now. At least, I don’t think I can. Then, what’s next?”
The inaudible reply to the question came from somewhere inside, and he bent closer over Punch once more.
“Aren’t you hungry?” he roared in his ear.
The boy shook his head.
“Well, I am,” shouted Pen.—“Oh, how stupid! This is like telling the enemy where we are, if they are anywhere within hearing. Hullo, what does this mean?” For he suddenly caught sight of the goat springing from stone to stone low down the stream as if coming to their side of the rushing water; and with the thought filling his mind that a tame goat like this must have an owner who was more likely to be an enemy of strangers than a friend, Pen began searching the rugged slopes on both sides of the river, but in vain. The goat, which had crossed, was now coming slowly towards them, appearing to be quite alone, though soon proving itself to be quite accustomed to the presence of human beings, for it ended by trotting over the sand and shingle at the river’s edge till it had approached them quite closely, to stand bleating at them, doubtless imploringly, though no sound was heard.
This lasted for a few minutes, and then the goat moved away, passing Punch, and disappearing upward through the dense growth, and apparently making its way up by the side of the great fall.
No sooner was it out of sight than a thought struck Pen; and, making a sign to his companion that meant “I won’t be long,” he shouldered his rifle and began to climb upwards in the direction taken by the goat.
He was beginning to regret now that he had not started sooner, for there was no sign of the little beast, and he was about to turn when, just to his right, he noted faint signs of what seemed to be a slightly used track which was easy to follow, and, stepping out, he observed the trees were more open, and at the end of a few minutes he found himself level with the top of the falls, where the river was gliding along in a deep, glassy sheet before making its plunge over the smooth, worn rocks into a basin below.
He had just grasped this when he saw that the faint track bore off to the right, and caught sight of the goat again moving amongst the trees, and for the next few minutes he had no difficulty in keeping it in sight, and, in addition, finding that it was making for what seemed to be the edge of another stream which issued from a patch of woodland on its way to the main torrent.
“I must get him here if I can,” thought Pen, for the roar of the falling waters was subdued into a gentle murmur, and to his surprise he caught sight of a shed-like building amongst the trees, fenced in by piled-up pieces of stone evidently taken from the smaller stream which he approached; and it was plain that this was the spot for which the goat had been making.
The young rifleman stopped short, trying to make out whether the place was inhabited; but he could see no sign save that the goat was making for the stone fence, on to which the active beast leaped, balanced itself carefully for a few moments, and then sprang down on the other side, to be greeted by a burst of bleating that came from apparently two of its kind within.
Pen stood screened by the trees for a time, fully expecting to see some occupant of the hut make his appearance; but the bleating ceased directly, and, approaching carefully, the young private stood at last by the rough stone wall, looking down on a scene which fully explained the reason for the goat’s visit.
She had returned to her kids; and after climbing the wall a very little search showed the visitor that the goat and her young ones were the sole occupants of the deserted place.
It was the rough home of a peasant who had apparently forsaken it upon the approach of the French soldiery. Everything was of the simplest kind; but situated as Pen Gray was it presented itself in a palatial guise, for there was everything that he could wish for at a time like that.
As before said, it was a shed-like structure; but there was bed and fireplace, a pile of wood outside the door, and, above all, a roof to cover those who sought shelter.
“Yes, I must bring him here somehow,” thought Pen as he caught sight of a cleanly scrubbed pail and a tin or two hanging upon nails in the wall. But he saw far more than this, for his senses were sharpened by hunger; and with a smile of satisfaction he hurried out, noting as he passed them that the kids, keen of appetite, were satisfying their desire for food; and, hurrying onwards, he made his way back to where he had left his companion lying in the dry, sandy patch of shingle; and some hours of that forenoon were taken up in the painful task of bearing the wounded lad by slow degrees to where, after much painful effort, they could both look down upon the nearly hidden shed.
“How are you now, Punch?” asked Pen, turning his head upwards.
There was no reply.
“Why, Punch,” cried Pen, “you are not asleep, are you?”
“Asleep!” said the boy bitterly; and then, in a faint whisper, “set me down.”
Pen took a step forward to where he could take hold of a stunted oak-bough whose bark felt soft and strange; and, holding tightly with one hand, he held his burden with the other while he sank slowly, the branch bending the while till he was kneeling. Then he slid his load down amongst the undergrowth and quickly opened his water-bottle and held it to the boy’s lips.
“Feel faint, lad?” he said.
Again there was no answer; but Punch swallowed a few mouthfuls.
“Ah, that’s better,” he said. “Head’s swimming.”
“Well, you shall lie still for a few minutes till you think you can bear it, and then I want you to get down to that hut.”
Punch looked up at him with misty eyes, wonderingly.
“Hut!” he said faintly. “What hut?”
“The one I told you about. You will be able to see it when you are better. There’s a rough bed there where you will be able to lie and rest till your wound heals.”
“Hut!”
“Oh, never mind now. Will you have some more water?”
The boy shook his head.
“Not going to die, am I?” he said feebly.
“Die! No!” cried Pen, with his heart sinking. “A chap like you isn’t going to die over a bit of a wound.”
“Don’t,” said the boy faintly, but with a tone of protest in his words. “Don’t gammon a fellow! I am not going to mind if I am. Our chaps don’t make a fuss about it when their time comes.”
“No,” said Pen sharply; “but your time hasn’t come yet.”
The boy looked up at him with a peculiar smile.
“Saying that to comfort a fellow,” he almost whispered; “only, I say, comrade, you did stick to me, and you won’t—won’t—”
“Won’t what?” said Pen sharply. “Leave you now? Is it likely?”
“Not a bit yet,” said the poor fellow faintly; “but I didn’t mean that.”
“Then what did you mean?” cried Pen wonderingly.
The poor lad made a snatch at his companion’s arm, and tried to draw him down.
“What is it?” said Pen anxiously now, for he was startled by the look in the boy’s eyes.
“Want to whisper,” came in a broken voice.
“No; you can’t have anything to whisper now,” said Pen. “There, let me give you a little more water.”
The boy shook his head.
“Want to whisper,” he murmured in a harsh, low voice.
“Well, what is it? But you had better not. Shut your eyes and have a bit of a nap till you are rested and the faintness has gone. I shall be rested, too, then, and I can get you down into the hut, where I tell you there’s a bed, and, better still, Punch, a draught of sweet warm milk.”
“Gammon!” said the boy again; and he hung more heavily upon Pen’s arm.—“Want to whisper.”
“Well, what is it?” said Pen, trying hard to master the feeling of despair that was creeping over him.
“Them wolves!” whispered the boy. “Don’t let them get me, comrade, when I’m gone.”
“You shut your eyes and go to sleep,” cried Pen angrily.
“No,” said the boy, speaking more strongly now. “I aren’t a baby, and I know what I’m saying. You tell me you won’t let them have me, and then I will go to sleep; and then if I don’t wake up no more—”
“What!” cried Pen, speaking with a simulated anger, “you won’t be such a coward as to go and leave me all alone here?”
The boy started; his eyes brightened a little, and he gazed half-wonderingly in his companion’s face.
“I—I didn’t think of that, comrade,” he faltered. “I was thinking I was going like some of our poor chaps; but I don’t want to shirk. There, I’ll try not.”
“Of course you will,” said Pen harshly. “Now then, try and have a nap.”
The boy closed his eyes, and in less than a minute he was breathing steadily and well, but evidently suffering now and then in his sleep, for the hand that clasped Pen’s gave a sudden jerk at intervals.
Quite an hour, during which the watcher did not stir, till there was a sharper twitch and the boy’s eyes opened, to look wonderingly in his companion’s as if he could not recall where he was.
“Have a little water now, Punch?”
“Drop,” he said; but the drop proved to be a thirsty draught, and he spoke quite in his senses now as he put a brief question.
“Is it far?” he said.
“To the hut? No. Do you think you can bear me to get you on my back again?”
“Yes. Going to. Look sharp!”
But as soon as the boy felt his companion take hold of his hand after restopping the water-bottle, Punch whispered, “Stop!”
“What is it? Would you like to wait a little longer?”
“No. Give me a bullet out of a cartridge.”
“A bullet? What for?”
“To bite,” said the boy with a grim smile.
Pen hesitated for a moment in doubt, looking in the boy’s smiling eyes the while. Then, as a flash of recollection of stories he had heard passed through his mind, he hastily drew a cartridge from his box, broke the little roll open, scattering the powder and setting the bullet free before passing it to his companion, who nodded in silence as he seized the piece of lead between his teeth. Then, nodding again, he raised one hand, which Pen took, and seizing one of the branches of the gnarled tree he bent it down till he got it close to his companion, and bade him hold on with all his might.
Punch’s fingers closed tightly upon the bough, which acted like a spring and helped to raise its holder sufficiently high for Pen to get him once more upon his shoulders, which he had freed from straps thrown down beside his rifle.
“Try and bear it,” he panted, as he heard the low, hissing breath from the poor fellow’s lips, and felt him quiver and wince. “I know it’s bad,” he added encouragingly, “but it won’t take me long.”
It did not, for in a very few minutes he had reached the rough stone wall, to which he shifted his burden, stood for a few moments panting, and then climbed over, took the sufferer in his arms, and staggered into the waiting shelter, where the next minute Punch was lying insensible upon the bed.
“Ha!” ejaculated Pen as he passed the back of his hand across his streaming forehead.
This suggested another action, but it was the palm of his hand that he laid across his companion’s brow.
“All wet!” he muttered. “He can’t be very feverish for the perspiration to come like that.”
Then he started violently, for a shadow crossed the open door, and he involuntarily threw up one hand to draw his slung rifle from his shoulder, and then his teeth snapped together.
There was no rifle there. It was lying with his cartouche-box right away by the stunted oak, as he mentally called the cork-tree.
The next minute he was breathing freely, for the deep-toned bleat of the goat arose, and he looked out, to see that it was answerable for the shadow.
“Ah, you will have to pay for this,” he muttered, as he started to run to where his weapon lay, his mind full now of thoughts that in his efforts over his comrade had been absent.
He was full of expectation that one or other of the vedettes might have caught sight of him bearing his load to the hut; and, with the full determination to get his rifle and hurry back to defend himself and his companion for as long as the cartridges held out, he started with a run up the slope, which proved to be only the stagger of one who was utterly exhausted, and degenerated almost into a crawl.
He was back at last, to find that Punch had not moved, but seemed to be sleeping heavily as he lay upon his sound shoulder; and, satisfied by this, Pen laid his rifle and belts across the foot of the bed and drew a deep breath.
“I can’t help it,” he nearly groaned. “It isn’t selfish; but if I don’t have something I can do no more.”
Then, strangely enough, he uttered a mocking laugh as he stepped to a rough shelf and took a little pail-like vessel with one stave prolonged into a handle from the place where it had been left clean by the last occupant of the hut, and as he stepped with it to the open door something within it rattled.
He looked down at it in surprise and wonder, and it was some moments before he grasped the fact that the piece of what resembled blackened clay was hard, dry cake.
“Ah!” he half-shouted as he raised it to his lips and tried to bite off a piece, but only to break off what felt like wood, which refused to crumble but gradually began to soften.
Then, smiling grimly, he thrust the cake within his jacket and stepped out, forgetting his pain and stiffness, to find to his dismay that there was no sign of the goat.
“How stupid!” he muttered the next minute. “My head won’t go. I can’t think.” And, recalling the goat’s former visit to the rough shelter, he hurried to where he had been a witness of its object, and to his great delight found the animal standing with half-closed eyes nibbling at some of the plentiful herbage while one of its kids was partaking of its evening meal.
Pen advanced cautiously with the little wooden vessel, ready to seize the animal by one of its horns if it attempted to escape, as it turned sharply and stared at him in wonder; but it only sniffed as if in recognition at the little pail, and resumed its browsing. But the kid was disposed to resent the interruption of the stranger, and some little force had to be used to thrust it away, returning again and again to begin to make some pretence of butting at the intruder.
Pen laughed aloud at the absurdity of his task as he finally got rid of the little animal, and made his first essay at milking, finding to his great delight that he was successful, while the goat-mother took it all as a matter of course, and did not move while her new friend refreshed himself with a hearty draught of the contents of the little pail; and then, snatching at a happy thought, drew the hardened cake from his breast and placed it so that it could soak up the soft warm milk which flowed into the vessel.
“Ah!” sighed the young soldier, “who’d have thought that taking the king’s shilling would bring a fellow to this? Now for poor Punch. Well, we sha’n’t starve to-night.”
Once more as he turned from the goat the thought assailed him that one of the vedettes might be in sight; but all was still and beautiful as he stepped back slowly, eating with avidity portions of the gradually softening black-bread, and feeling the while that life and hope and strength were gradually coming back.
“Now for poor Punch!” he muttered again; and, entering the rough shelter once more, he stood looking down upon the wounded boy, who was sleeping heavily, so soundly that Pen felt that it would be a cruelty to rouse him. So, partaking sparingly of his novel meal, he placed a part upon a stool within reach of the rough pallet.
“Wounded men don’t want food,” he muttered. “It’s Nature’s way of keeping off fever; and I must keep watch again, and give him a little milk when he wakes. Yes, when he wakes—when he wakes,” he muttered, as he settled himself upon the earthen floor within touch of his sleeping comrade. “Mustn’t close the door,” he continued, with a little laugh, “for there doesn’t seem to be one; and, besides, it would make the place dark. Why, there’s a star peeping out over the shoulder of the mountain, and that soft, low, deep hum is the falling water. Why, that must be the star I used to see at home in the old days; and, oh, how beautiful and restful everything seems! But I mustn’t go to sleep.—Are you asleep, Punch?” he whispered softly. “Poor fellow! That’s right. Sleep and Nature will help you with your wound; but I must keep awake. It would never do for you to rouse up and find me fast. No,” he half-sighed. “Poor lad, you mustn’t go yet where so many other poor fellows have gone. A boy like you! Well! It’s the—fortune—fortune—of war—and—and—”
Nature would take no denial. Pen Gray drew one long, deep, restful breath as if wide-awake, and then slowly and as if grudgingly respired.
Fast asleep.
Chapter Seven.More about him.It was bright daylight, and Pen Gray started up in alarm, his mind in a state of confusion consequent upon the heaviness of his sleep and the feeling of trouble that something—he knew not what—had happened.For a few moments he was divided between the ideas that the enemy had come to arrest him and that his companion had passed away in his sleep. But these were only the ragged shadows of the night, for the boy was still sleeping soundly, the food remained untouched, and, upon cautiously looking outside, there was nothing to be seen but the beauties of a sunny morn.Pen drew a deep breath as he returned to the hut, troubled with a sensation of weariness and strain, but still light-hearted and hopeful.There was something invigorating in the mountain air even deep down there in the valley, and he was ready to smile at his position as his eyes lit upon the little pail.“Oh, I say,” he said to himself, “it is like temptation placed in one’s way! How horribly hungry I am! Well, no wonder; but I must play fair.”Taking out his knife, he was about to divide the piece of cake, which had so swollen up in the milk that there seemed to be a goodly portion for two; but, setting his teeth hard, he shut the knife with a snap and pulled himself together.“Come,” he muttered, “I haven’t gone through all this drilling for months to snatch the first chance to forget it. I will begin the day by waiting until poor Punch wakes.”He gave another look at his companion to make sure that he was still sleeping soundly and was no worse; and then, after glancing at the priming of his rifle, he stepped out to reconnoitre, keeping cautiously within shelter of the trees, but not obtaining a glimpse of any of the vedettes.“Looks as if they have gone,” he thought, and he stepped to the edge of another patch of woodland to again sweep the valley-sides as far as was possible.This led him to the edge of the river, where, as soon as he appeared, he was conscious of the fact that scores of semi-transparent-looking fish had darted away from close to his feet, to take shelter beneath stones and the bank higher up the stream, which glided down towards the fall pure as crystal and sparkling in the sun.“Trout!” he exclaimed. “Something to forage for; and then a fire. Doesn’t look like starving.”Pen took another good look round, but nothing like a vedette or single sentry was in view; and after a few moments of hesitation he snatched at the opportunity.Stepping back into the shelter of the woods, he hurriedly stripped, after hanging his rifle from a broken branch, and then dashing out into the sunshine he leaped at once into the beautiful, clear, sparkling water, which flashed up at his plunge. Then striking out, he swam with vigorous strokes right into the depths, and felt that he was being carried steadily downward towards the fall.This was something to make him put forth his strength; and as he struck out upstream so as to reach the bank again there was something wondrously invigorating in the cool, crisp water which sent thrills of strength through his exhausted frame, making the lad laugh aloud as he fought against the pressure of the water, won, and waded ashore nearly a hundred yards below where he had plunged in.“What a stream!” he exclaimed as he shook the streaming water from his tense muscles. “I must mind another time. How cold it was! But how hot the sun feels! Double!” he ejaculated, and he started along the bank in a military trot, reached the spot again where he had made his plunge, looked round, indulged in another run in the brilliant sunshine, and, pretty well half-dried by his efforts, stepped back into the wood and rapidly resumed his clothes.“Why, it has pretty well taken the stiffness out of me,” he muttered, “and I feel ready for anything, only I’m nearly famished. Here, I can’t wait,” he added, as he finished dressing, smartening himself up into soldierly trim, and giving his feet a stamp or two as he resumed his boots. “Now, how about poor Punch? He can’t be worse, for he seemed to have slept so well. It seems hard, but I must wake him up.”To the lad’s great satisfaction, as he reached the door of the rough cabin, he found that the wounded boy was just unclosing his eyes to look at him wonderingly as if unable to make out what it all meant.“Gray,” he said faintly.“Yes. How are you, lad?”“I—I don’t quite know,” was the reply, given in a faint voice.—“Oh, I recollect now. Yes. There, it stings—my wound.”“Yes, I’ll bathe it and see to it soon,” said Pen eagerly; “but you are no worse.”“Ain’t I? I—I thought I was. I say, look here, Gray; what does this mean? I can’t lift this arm at all. It hurts so.”“Yes. Stiff with your wound; but it will be better when I have done it up.”“Think so?”“Yes.”“But look here.”“Yes, I am looking.”“This arm isn’t wounded. Look at that.”“Yes, I see; you lifted it up and it fell down again.”“Yes. There’s no strength in it. It ain’t dead yet?”“Didn’t seem like it,” said Pen, smiling cheerily. “You lifted it up.”“Yes, I know; but it fell back again. And what’s the matter with my voice?”“Nothing.”“Yes, there is,” cried the boy peevishly. “It’s all gone squeaky again, like it was before it changed and turned gruff. I say, Gray, am I going to be very bad, and never get well again?”“Not you! What nonsense!”“But I am so weak.”“Well, you have seen plenty of our poor fellows in hospital, haven’t you?”“Yes, some of them,” said the boy feebly.“Well, weren’t they weak?”“Yes, I forgot all that; but I wasn’t so bad as this yesterday. It was yesterday, wasn’t it?”“Yes. Don’t you remember?”“No. How was it?”“There, don’t you bother your brains about that.”“But I want to know.”“And I want you to do all you can to get well.”“Course you do. ’Tisn’t fever, is it?”“Fever! No! Yes, you were feverish. Every one is after a wound. Now then,” And he took out and opened his knife.“Wound! Wound!” said the boy, watching him. “Whatcher going to do with your knife? Take your bay’net if you want to finish a fellow off.”“Well, I don’t,” said Pen, laughing.“’Tain’t anything to laugh at, comrade.”“Yes, it is, when you talk nonsense. Now then, breakfast.”“Don’t gammon,” said the poor fellow feebly. “My head isn’t all swimmy now. Beginning to remember. Didn’t you carry me down here?”“To be sure, and precious heavy you were!”“Good chap!” said the boy, sighing. “You always was a trump; but don’t play with a poor fellow. There can’t be no breakfast.”“Oh, can’t there? I’ll show you; and I want to begin. I say, Punch, I’m nearly starved.”“I’m not,” said the poor fellow sadly. “I couldn’t eat.”“Oh, well, you have got to, so look sharp, or I shall go mad.”“Whatcher mean?”“I told you I’m starving. I have hardly touched anything for two days except water.”“Well, go on then. What is there for breakfast?”“Bread.”“Ugh! Don’t! Black dry bread! It makes me feel sick.”“Bread and milk.”“Where did you get the milk?”“Never you mind,” said Pen, plunging his knife into the dark sop which half-filled the little pail. “Now then, you have got to eat first.”“No, don’t ask me; I can’t touch it,” and the boy closed his eyes against the piece of saturated bread that his companion held out to him on the knife.“You must,” said Pen; “so look sharp.”“I can’t, I tell you.”“Well, then, I shall have to starve.”“No, no; go on.”“After you.”It took a good deal of pressure, but at last the truth of the French saying about its being only the first step that costs was proved, for after the first mouthful, of which the poor fellow shudderingly partook, the boy consented to open his mouth again, after holding out until his amateur surgeon and nurse had consented to share the meal, which proved refreshing to the patient, who partook of a little; while, bearing in mind that he could at all events restore the fluid food, Pen ate ravenously, his spirits rising with every mouthful.“It will go hard,” he said to himself, “if I can’t forage something else. There are the trout, to begin with. I know I can catch some of them in the shallows, and that too without rod or line. That is,” he added, “if we are not found out and marched off as prisoners.”“Whatcher thinking about?” said Punch drowsily.“Catching fish, and making a fire to cook them.”“There’s my flint and steel in my satchel, but where’s your fish?”“In the river.”“But you can’t catch ’em.”“Oh, can’t I, Punch?”“Oh yes, I know,” piped the boy. “They are trout. I saw some the other day when we crossed that stream. I saw some run under the stones, and wanted to creep up and tiddle one, only I couldn’t leave the ranks.”“Ah, well, there are no ranks to leave now, Punch, and we shall have plenty of time to tiddle the trout, as you call it, for we shall have to stay here till you get well.”“I say, don’t talk, please. Want to go to sleep.”“That’s right,” said Pen cheerfully. “Sleep away, and I won’t bathe your wound till you wake again.”The boy made no answer, but dropped off at once.“That’s better,” thought Pen, “and while he sleeps I will see whether I can’t get some of the trout.”He waited until his companion was breathing heavily, and then he seated himself by the door and began to carefully clean his rifle and accoutrements, which soldierly task at an end, he stood over the sleeping boy a few minutes, and then stepped outside the dark hut to plunge into the sunshine; but, recollecting himself, he stepped in amongst the trees, and keeping close in their shelter moved from spot to spot spending nearly half an hour searching every eminence for signs of danger.“The coast seems clear,” he said to himself, “and the enemy may have moved on; but I must be careful. I want to join our fellows, of course; but if I’m made prisoner it will be the death of poor Punch, for they are not very careful about prisoners, and—”Pen stopped short as he held on to the bough of one of the stunted trees growing in the rocky bottom and peered out to sweep the side of the valley where he felt that the mule-track ought to be.He started back as if the bullet that had been fired from a musket had cut the leaves above his head and stood listening to the roll of echoes which followed the shot. Then there was another, and another, followed by scores, telling him that a sharp skirmish had begun; and after a while he could just make out a faint cloud of smoke above the trees, where the dim vapour was slowly rising.“Yes,” he said, “that’s where I thought the mule-path must be. But what a height it is up! And what does it mean? Are our fellows coming back and driving the enemy before them, or is it the other way on?”There was no telling; but when, about an hour later, the firing had grown nearer and then slowly become more and more distant till it died away, Pen had learned one thing, and that was the necessity for keeping carefully in hiding, for the enemy must be somewhere near.He stepped back into the hut after silence once more reigned in the false scene of peace, and found that the peppering of the musketry had had no effect upon the sleeper, who did not stir when he leant over him and laid his hand upon the poor fellow’s forehead, which was cool and moist.“Ha!” sighed Pen, “he’s not going to die; but he will be as weak as weak for a month to come, and I ought to have been with our fellows instead of hiding here, for I have no business to be doing ambulance work, and so they would tell me. Ah!” he ejaculated, as he started to the door again, for from somewhere much farther away there came the deep roll of a platoon of musketry, which was repeated again and again, but always more distant, though growing, while still more faintly, into the sounds of a sharp engagement, till it died quite away.“I never thought of that. That first firing I heard must have been the enemy. I wonder I didn’t think so before. I am sure now. There wasn’t a single shot that I could have said was from a rifle. But it is impossible to say for certain which side is holding the valley. At any rate our fellows were not there.”
It was bright daylight, and Pen Gray started up in alarm, his mind in a state of confusion consequent upon the heaviness of his sleep and the feeling of trouble that something—he knew not what—had happened.
For a few moments he was divided between the ideas that the enemy had come to arrest him and that his companion had passed away in his sleep. But these were only the ragged shadows of the night, for the boy was still sleeping soundly, the food remained untouched, and, upon cautiously looking outside, there was nothing to be seen but the beauties of a sunny morn.
Pen drew a deep breath as he returned to the hut, troubled with a sensation of weariness and strain, but still light-hearted and hopeful.
There was something invigorating in the mountain air even deep down there in the valley, and he was ready to smile at his position as his eyes lit upon the little pail.
“Oh, I say,” he said to himself, “it is like temptation placed in one’s way! How horribly hungry I am! Well, no wonder; but I must play fair.”
Taking out his knife, he was about to divide the piece of cake, which had so swollen up in the milk that there seemed to be a goodly portion for two; but, setting his teeth hard, he shut the knife with a snap and pulled himself together.
“Come,” he muttered, “I haven’t gone through all this drilling for months to snatch the first chance to forget it. I will begin the day by waiting until poor Punch wakes.”
He gave another look at his companion to make sure that he was still sleeping soundly and was no worse; and then, after glancing at the priming of his rifle, he stepped out to reconnoitre, keeping cautiously within shelter of the trees, but not obtaining a glimpse of any of the vedettes.
“Looks as if they have gone,” he thought, and he stepped to the edge of another patch of woodland to again sweep the valley-sides as far as was possible.
This led him to the edge of the river, where, as soon as he appeared, he was conscious of the fact that scores of semi-transparent-looking fish had darted away from close to his feet, to take shelter beneath stones and the bank higher up the stream, which glided down towards the fall pure as crystal and sparkling in the sun.
“Trout!” he exclaimed. “Something to forage for; and then a fire. Doesn’t look like starving.”
Pen took another good look round, but nothing like a vedette or single sentry was in view; and after a few moments of hesitation he snatched at the opportunity.
Stepping back into the shelter of the woods, he hurriedly stripped, after hanging his rifle from a broken branch, and then dashing out into the sunshine he leaped at once into the beautiful, clear, sparkling water, which flashed up at his plunge. Then striking out, he swam with vigorous strokes right into the depths, and felt that he was being carried steadily downward towards the fall.
This was something to make him put forth his strength; and as he struck out upstream so as to reach the bank again there was something wondrously invigorating in the cool, crisp water which sent thrills of strength through his exhausted frame, making the lad laugh aloud as he fought against the pressure of the water, won, and waded ashore nearly a hundred yards below where he had plunged in.
“What a stream!” he exclaimed as he shook the streaming water from his tense muscles. “I must mind another time. How cold it was! But how hot the sun feels! Double!” he ejaculated, and he started along the bank in a military trot, reached the spot again where he had made his plunge, looked round, indulged in another run in the brilliant sunshine, and, pretty well half-dried by his efforts, stepped back into the wood and rapidly resumed his clothes.
“Why, it has pretty well taken the stiffness out of me,” he muttered, “and I feel ready for anything, only I’m nearly famished. Here, I can’t wait,” he added, as he finished dressing, smartening himself up into soldierly trim, and giving his feet a stamp or two as he resumed his boots. “Now, how about poor Punch? He can’t be worse, for he seemed to have slept so well. It seems hard, but I must wake him up.”
To the lad’s great satisfaction, as he reached the door of the rough cabin, he found that the wounded boy was just unclosing his eyes to look at him wonderingly as if unable to make out what it all meant.
“Gray,” he said faintly.
“Yes. How are you, lad?”
“I—I don’t quite know,” was the reply, given in a faint voice.—“Oh, I recollect now. Yes. There, it stings—my wound.”
“Yes, I’ll bathe it and see to it soon,” said Pen eagerly; “but you are no worse.”
“Ain’t I? I—I thought I was. I say, look here, Gray; what does this mean? I can’t lift this arm at all. It hurts so.”
“Yes. Stiff with your wound; but it will be better when I have done it up.”
“Think so?”
“Yes.”
“But look here.”
“Yes, I am looking.”
“This arm isn’t wounded. Look at that.”
“Yes, I see; you lifted it up and it fell down again.”
“Yes. There’s no strength in it. It ain’t dead yet?”
“Didn’t seem like it,” said Pen, smiling cheerily. “You lifted it up.”
“Yes, I know; but it fell back again. And what’s the matter with my voice?”
“Nothing.”
“Yes, there is,” cried the boy peevishly. “It’s all gone squeaky again, like it was before it changed and turned gruff. I say, Gray, am I going to be very bad, and never get well again?”
“Not you! What nonsense!”
“But I am so weak.”
“Well, you have seen plenty of our poor fellows in hospital, haven’t you?”
“Yes, some of them,” said the boy feebly.
“Well, weren’t they weak?”
“Yes, I forgot all that; but I wasn’t so bad as this yesterday. It was yesterday, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Don’t you remember?”
“No. How was it?”
“There, don’t you bother your brains about that.”
“But I want to know.”
“And I want you to do all you can to get well.”
“Course you do. ’Tisn’t fever, is it?”
“Fever! No! Yes, you were feverish. Every one is after a wound. Now then,” And he took out and opened his knife.
“Wound! Wound!” said the boy, watching him. “Whatcher going to do with your knife? Take your bay’net if you want to finish a fellow off.”
“Well, I don’t,” said Pen, laughing.
“’Tain’t anything to laugh at, comrade.”
“Yes, it is, when you talk nonsense. Now then, breakfast.”
“Don’t gammon,” said the poor fellow feebly. “My head isn’t all swimmy now. Beginning to remember. Didn’t you carry me down here?”
“To be sure, and precious heavy you were!”
“Good chap!” said the boy, sighing. “You always was a trump; but don’t play with a poor fellow. There can’t be no breakfast.”
“Oh, can’t there? I’ll show you; and I want to begin. I say, Punch, I’m nearly starved.”
“I’m not,” said the poor fellow sadly. “I couldn’t eat.”
“Oh, well, you have got to, so look sharp, or I shall go mad.”
“Whatcher mean?”
“I told you I’m starving. I have hardly touched anything for two days except water.”
“Well, go on then. What is there for breakfast?”
“Bread.”
“Ugh! Don’t! Black dry bread! It makes me feel sick.”
“Bread and milk.”
“Where did you get the milk?”
“Never you mind,” said Pen, plunging his knife into the dark sop which half-filled the little pail. “Now then, you have got to eat first.”
“No, don’t ask me; I can’t touch it,” and the boy closed his eyes against the piece of saturated bread that his companion held out to him on the knife.
“You must,” said Pen; “so look sharp.”
“I can’t, I tell you.”
“Well, then, I shall have to starve.”
“No, no; go on.”
“After you.”
It took a good deal of pressure, but at last the truth of the French saying about its being only the first step that costs was proved, for after the first mouthful, of which the poor fellow shudderingly partook, the boy consented to open his mouth again, after holding out until his amateur surgeon and nurse had consented to share the meal, which proved refreshing to the patient, who partook of a little; while, bearing in mind that he could at all events restore the fluid food, Pen ate ravenously, his spirits rising with every mouthful.
“It will go hard,” he said to himself, “if I can’t forage something else. There are the trout, to begin with. I know I can catch some of them in the shallows, and that too without rod or line. That is,” he added, “if we are not found out and marched off as prisoners.”
“Whatcher thinking about?” said Punch drowsily.
“Catching fish, and making a fire to cook them.”
“There’s my flint and steel in my satchel, but where’s your fish?”
“In the river.”
“But you can’t catch ’em.”
“Oh, can’t I, Punch?”
“Oh yes, I know,” piped the boy. “They are trout. I saw some the other day when we crossed that stream. I saw some run under the stones, and wanted to creep up and tiddle one, only I couldn’t leave the ranks.”
“Ah, well, there are no ranks to leave now, Punch, and we shall have plenty of time to tiddle the trout, as you call it, for we shall have to stay here till you get well.”
“I say, don’t talk, please. Want to go to sleep.”
“That’s right,” said Pen cheerfully. “Sleep away, and I won’t bathe your wound till you wake again.”
The boy made no answer, but dropped off at once.
“That’s better,” thought Pen, “and while he sleeps I will see whether I can’t get some of the trout.”
He waited until his companion was breathing heavily, and then he seated himself by the door and began to carefully clean his rifle and accoutrements, which soldierly task at an end, he stood over the sleeping boy a few minutes, and then stepped outside the dark hut to plunge into the sunshine; but, recollecting himself, he stepped in amongst the trees, and keeping close in their shelter moved from spot to spot spending nearly half an hour searching every eminence for signs of danger.
“The coast seems clear,” he said to himself, “and the enemy may have moved on; but I must be careful. I want to join our fellows, of course; but if I’m made prisoner it will be the death of poor Punch, for they are not very careful about prisoners, and—”
Pen stopped short as he held on to the bough of one of the stunted trees growing in the rocky bottom and peered out to sweep the side of the valley where he felt that the mule-track ought to be.
He started back as if the bullet that had been fired from a musket had cut the leaves above his head and stood listening to the roll of echoes which followed the shot. Then there was another, and another, followed by scores, telling him that a sharp skirmish had begun; and after a while he could just make out a faint cloud of smoke above the trees, where the dim vapour was slowly rising.
“Yes,” he said, “that’s where I thought the mule-path must be. But what a height it is up! And what does it mean? Are our fellows coming back and driving the enemy before them, or is it the other way on?”
There was no telling; but when, about an hour later, the firing had grown nearer and then slowly become more and more distant till it died away, Pen had learned one thing, and that was the necessity for keeping carefully in hiding, for the enemy must be somewhere near.
He stepped back into the hut after silence once more reigned in the false scene of peace, and found that the peppering of the musketry had had no effect upon the sleeper, who did not stir when he leant over him and laid his hand upon the poor fellow’s forehead, which was cool and moist.
“Ha!” sighed Pen, “he’s not going to die; but he will be as weak as weak for a month to come, and I ought to have been with our fellows instead of hiding here, for I have no business to be doing ambulance work, and so they would tell me. Ah!” he ejaculated, as he started to the door again, for from somewhere much farther away there came the deep roll of a platoon of musketry, which was repeated again and again, but always more distant, though growing, while still more faintly, into the sounds of a sharp engagement, till it died quite away.
“I never thought of that. That first firing I heard must have been the enemy. I wonder I didn’t think so before. I am sure now. There wasn’t a single shot that I could have said was from a rifle. But it is impossible to say for certain which side is holding the valley. At any rate our fellows were not there.”
Chapter Eight.The King’s Shilling.“Ha, ha, ha, ha!” A bright, ringing specimen of a youth’s laugh, given out by one who is healthy, strong, and fairly content, allowing for drawbacks, with the utterer’s position in life.“Whatcher laughing at?” followed in the querulous tones of one who was to a great extent at the opposite pole of life.“You, Punch.”“I don’t see nothing to laugh at, sick and weak as I am.”“Yes, you are weak enough, and don’t know the difference as I do.”“Difference! There ain’t no difference. I’m a regular invalid, as they calls them, and just as bad as some of our poor chaps who go back to live on the top of a wooden leg all the rest of their lives.”“Stuff and nonsense, Punch! You are getting better and stronger every day.”“I ain’t. Look at that arm; it’s as thin as a mop-stick.”“Well, it is thin, certainly; but a chap of your age, growing fast, generally is thin.”“Ya! Growing! How can a fellow grow with a hole in his back?”“You haven’t got a hole in your back. It’s healing up fast.”“’Taint.”“Yes, it is. You haven’t seen it, and I have every day. I say it’s healing beautifully.”“Ah, you’ll say next that I ain’t weak.”“No, I shan’t.”“Well, that’s because you are always trying to make me think that I am better than I am.”“Well, what of that? I don’t want to put you out of heart.”“No, but you needn’t gammon me. I know I ain’t as weak as a rat, because I am ten times weaker. I have got no wind at all; and I do wish you wouldn’t be always wallacking me down to that big waterfall. I’m always pumped out before I get half-way there, and quite done up before I get back. What’s the good of going there?”“Beautiful place, Punchy, and the mountain air seems to come down with the water and fill you full of strength.”“Does you perhaps, but it don’t do me no good. Beautiful place indeed! Ugly great hole!”“’Tisn’t; it’s lovely. I don’t believe we shall ever see a more beautiful spot in our lives.”“It makes me horrible. I feel sometimes as if I could jump in and put myself out of my misery. Just two steps, and a fellow would be washed away to nowhere.”“Why, you have regularly got the grumps to-day, Punch; just, too, when you were getting better than ever.”“I ain’t, I tell you. I had a look at myself this morning while you were snoring, and I am as thin as a scarecrow. My poor old mother wouldn’t know me again if ever I got back; and I sha’n’t never see our old place no more.”“Yes, you will, Punch—grown up into a fine, manly-looking British rifleman, for you will be too big to blow your bugle then. You might believe me.”“Bugle! Yes, I didn’t give it a rub yesterday. Just hand it off that peg.”Pen reached the bugle from where it hung by its green cord, and the lines in Punch’s young forehead began to fade as he gave the instrument a touch with his sleeve, and then placed the mouthpiece to his lips, filled out his sadly pale, hollow cheeks, and looked as if he were going to blow with all his might, when he was checked by Pen clapping his hand over the glistening copper bell.“Whatcher doing of?” cried the boy angrily.“Stopping you. There, you see you are better. You couldn’t have attempted that a while ago.”“Ya! Think I’m such a silly as to bring the enemy down upon us?”“Well, I didn’t know.”“Then you ought to. I should just like to give the call, though, to set our dear old lads going along the mountain-side there skirmishing and peppering the frog-eating warmints till they ran for their lives.”“Hurrah!” shouted Pen. “Who’s trying to bring the enemy down upon us now, when we know there are some of them sneaking about in vedettes as they hold both ends of the valley. Now you say you are not better if you dare.”“Oh, I don’t want to fall out,” grumbled the invalid. “You think you know, but you ain’t got a wound in your back to feel when a cold wind comes off the mountains. I think I ought to know best.”“But you don’t, Punch. Those pains will die out in time, and you will go on growing, and keeping thin perhaps for a bit; but your muscles will fill out by-and-by, same as mine do in this beautiful air.”“Needn’t be so precious proud of them,” said the boy sourly.“I’m not. There, have another fish.”“Sha’n’t. I’m sick to death on them. They are only Spanish or Portuguee trout, and not half so good as roach and dace out of a good old English pond.”Pen laughed merrily again.“Ah, grin away! I think I ought to know.”“Yes—better than to grumble when I have broiled the fish so nicely over the wood embers with sticks I cut for skewers. They were delicious, and I ate till I felt ashamed.”“So you ought to be.”“To enjoy myself so,” continued Pen, “while you, with your mouth so out of taste and no appetite, could hardly eat a bit.”“Well, who’s to have a happetite with a wound like mine? I shall never get no better till I get a mug of real old English beer.”“Never mind; you get plenty of milk.”“Ya! Nasty, sickly stuff! I’ll never touch it again.”“Well then, beautiful sparkling water.”“Who wants sparkling water? ’Tain’t like English. It’s so thin and cold.”“Come, come; you must own that you are mending fast, Punch.”“Who wants to be mended,” snarled the poor fellow, “and go through life like my old woman’s cracked chayney plate with the rivet in it! I was a strong lad once, and could beat any drummer in the regiment in a race, while now I ought to be in horspital.”“No, you ought not. I’ll tell you what you want, Punch.”“Oh, I know.”“No, you don’t. You want to get just a little stronger, so as you can walk ten miles in a day.”“Ten miles! Why, I used to do twenty easy.”“So you will again, lad; but I mean in a night, for we shall have to lie up all day and march all night so as to keep clear of the enemy.”“Then you mean for us to try and get out of this wretched hole?”“I mean for us to go on tramp as soon as you are quite strong enough; and then you will think it’s a beautiful valley. Why, Punch, I have crept about here of a night while you have been asleep, so that I have got to know the place by heart, and I should like to have the chance of leading our fellows into places I know where they could hold it against ten times or twenty times their number of Frenchmen who might try to drive them out.”“You have got to know that?” said Punch with a show of animation that had grown strange to the poor fellow.“Yes,” cried Pen triumphantly.“Well, then, all I have got to say is you waren’t playing fair.”“Of course it wasn’t. Seeing you were so weak you couldn’t walk.”“There now, you are laughing at a fellow; but you don’t play fair.”“Don’t I? In what way?”“Why, you promised while I have been so bad that you would read to me a bit.”“And I couldn’t, Punch, because we have got nothing to read.”“And then you promised that you would tell me how it was you come to take the king’s shilling.”“Well, yes, I did; but you don’t want to know that.”“Yes, I do. I have been wanting to know ever since.”“Why, boy?”“Because it seems so queer that a lad like you should join the ranks.”“Why queer? You are too young yet, but you will be in the ranks some day as a full private.”“Yes, some day; but then, you see, my father was a soldier. Yours warn’t, was he?”“No-o,” said Pen, frowning and looking straight away before him out of the hut-door.“Well, then, why don’t you speak out?”“Because I don’t feel much disposed. It is rather a tender subject, Punch.”“There, I always knew there was something. Look here; you and me’s friends and comrades, ain’t we?”“I think so, Punch. I have tried to be.”“So you have. Nobody could have been better. I have lain awake lots of times and thought about what you did. You haven’t minded my saying such nasty things as I have sometimes?”“Not I, Punch. Sick people are often irritable.”“Yes,” said the boy eagerly, “that’s it. I have said lots of things to you that I didn’t mean; but it’s when my back’s been very bad, and it seemed to spur me on to be spiteful, and I have been very sorry sometimes, only I was ashamed to tell you. But you haven’t done anything to be ashamed of?” Pen was silent for a few moments.“Ashamed? No—yes.”“Well, you can’t have been both,” said the boy. “Whatcher mean by that?”“There have been times, Punch, when I have felt ashamed of what I have done.”“Why, what have you done? I don’t believe it was ever anything bad. You say what it was. I’ll never tell.”“Enlisted for a soldier.”“What?” cried the boy. “Why, that ain’t nothing to be ashamed of. What stuff! Why, that’s something to be proud of, specially in our Rifles. In the other regiments we have got out here the lads are proud of being in scarlet. Let ’em. But I know better. There isn’t one of them who wouldn’t be proud to be in our dark-green, and to shoulder a rifle. Besides, we have got our bit of scarlet on the collar and cuffs, and that’s quite enough. Why, you are laughing at me! You couldn’t be ashamed of being in our regiment. I know what it was—you ran away from home?”“It was no longer home to me, Punch.”“Why, didn’t you live there?”“Yes; but it didn’t seem like home any longer. It was like this, Punch. My father and mother had died.”“Oh,” said the boy softly, “that’s bad. Very good uns, waren’t they?”Pen bowed his head.“Then it waren’t your home any longer?”“Yes and no, Punch,” said the lad gravely.“There you go again! Don’t aggravate a fellow when he is sick and weak. I ain’t a scholar like you, and when you puts it into me with your ‘yes and no’ it makes my head ache. It can’t be yes and no too.”“Well, Punch,” said Pen, smiling, “it was mine by rights, but I was under age.”“What’s under age?”“Not twenty-one.”“Of course not. You told me months ago that you was only eighteen. Anybody could see that, because you ain’t got no whiskers. But what has that got to do with it?”“Well, I don’t see why I should tell you all this, Punch, for it’s all about law.”“But I want to know,” said the boy, “because it’s all about you.”“Well, it’s like this: my father left my uncle to be executor and my trustee.”“Oh, I say, whatcher talking about? You said your father was a good un, didn’t you?”“I did.”“Well, then, he couldn’t have left your uncle to be your executioner when you hadn’t done nothing.”“Executor, Punch,” said the lad, laughing.“Well, that’s what I said, didn’t I?”“No; that’s a very different thing. An executor is one who executes.”“Well, I know that. Hangs people who ain’t soldiers, and shoots them as is. Court-martial, you know.”“Punch, you are getting in a muddle.”“Glad of it,” said the boy, “for I thought it was, and I don’t like to hear you talk like that.”“Then let’s put it right. An executor is one who executes the commands of a person who is dead.”“Oh, I see,” said the boy. “Dead without being executed.”“Look here, Punch,” said Pen, laughing, “you had better be still and listen, and I will try and make it plain to you. My uncle was my father’s executor, who had to see that the property he left was rightfully distributed.”“Oh, I see,” said Punch.“And my father made him my trustee, to take charge of the money that was to be mine when I became twenty-one.”“All right; go on. I am getting it now.”“Then he had to see to my education, and advise me till I grew up.”“Well, that was all right, only if I had been your old man, seeing what a chap you are, I shouldn’t have called in no uncle. I should have said, ‘Young Penton Gray has got his head screwed on proper, and he will do what’s right.’ I suppose, then, your uncle didn’t.”“I thought not, Punch.”“Then, of course, he didn’t. What did he do, then?”“Made me leave school,” said Pen.“Oh, well, that don’t sound very bad. Made you leave school? Well, I never was at school but once, but I’d have given anything to be made to come away.”“Ah, perhaps you would, Punch. But then there are schools and schools.”“Well, I know that,” said the boy irritably; “but don’t tease a fellow, it makes me so wild now I’m all weak like.”“Well, then, let’s say no more about it.”“What! Leave off telling of me?”“Yes, while you are irritable.”“I ain’t irritable; not a bit. It’s only that I want to know.”“Very well, then, Punch; I will cut it short.”“No, you don’t, so come now! You promised to tell me all about it, so play fair.”“Very well, then, you must listen patiently.”“That’s what I’m a-doing of, only you will keep talking in riddles like about your executioners and trustees. I want you to tell me just in plain English.”“Very well, then, Punch. I was at a military school, and I didn’t want to be fetched away.”“Oh, I see,” cried the boy. “You mean one of them big schools where they makes young officers?”“Yes.”“Like Woolwich and Addiscombe?”“Yes.”“You were going to be a soldier, then—I mean, an officer?”“An officer is a soldier, Punch.”“Of course he is. Oh, well, I don’t wonder you didn’t want to be fetched away. Learning to be an officer, eh? That’s fine. Didn’t your uncle want you to be a soldier, then?”“No. He wanted me to go as a private pupil with a lawyer.”“What, and get to be a lawyer?” cried the boy excitedly. “Oh, I say, you weren’t going to stand that?”“No, Punch. Perhaps I should have obeyed him, only I knew that it had always been my father’s wish that I should go into the army, and he had left the money for my education and to buy a commission when I left the military school.”“Here, I know,” cried the boy excitedly; “you needn’t tell me no more. I heard a story once about a wicked uncle. I know—your one bought the commission and kept it for himself.”“No, Punch; that wouldn’t work out right. When I begged him to let me stay at the military school he mocked at me, and laughed, and said that my poor father must have been mad to think of throwing away money like that; and over and over again he insisted that I should go on with my studies of the law, and give up all notion of wearing a red coat, for he could see that that was all I thought about.”“Well?” said the boy.“Well, Punch?”“And then you punched his head, and ran away from home.”“No, I did not.”“Then you ought to have done. I would if anybody said my poor father was mad; and, besides, your uncle must have been a bad un to want to make you a lawyer. I suppose he was a lawyer too.”“Yes.”“There, if I didn’t think so! But he must have been a bad un. Said you wanted to be a soldier so as to wear the uniform? Well, if you did want to, that’s only nat’ral. A soldier’s always proud of his uniform. I heard our colonel say that it was the king’s livery and something to be proud on. I am proud of mine, even if it has got a bit raggy-taggy with sleeping out in it in all sorts of weather, and rooshing through bushes and mud, and crossing streams. But soldiers don’t think of that sort of thing, and we shall all have new things served out by-and-by. Well, go on.”“Oh, that’s about all, Punch.”“You get on. I know better. Tain’t half all. I want you to come to the cutting off and taking the shilling.”“Oh, you want to hear that?”“Why, of course I do. Why, it’s all the juicy part. Don’t hang fire. Let’s have it with a rush now. Fix bayonets, and at them!”“Why, Punch,” said Pen, laughing, “don’t you tell me again that you are not getting better!”“I waren’t going to now. This warms a fellow up a bit. I say, your uncle is a bad un, and no mistake. There, forward!”“But I have nearly told all, Punch. Life got so miserable at home, and I was so sick of the law, that I led such a life with my uncle through begging him to let me go back to the school, that he, one day—”“Well, whatcher stopping for?” cried the boy, whose cheeks were flushed and eyes sparkling with excitement.“I don’t like talking about it,” replied Pen. “I suppose I was wrong, for my father had left all the management of my affairs in his brother-in-law’s hands.”“Why, you said your uncle’s hands just now!”“Yes, Punch; in my mother’s brother’s hands, so he was my uncle.”“Well, go on.”“And I had been begging him to alter his plans.”“Yes, and let you go back to the school?”“And I suppose he was tired out with what he called my obstinacy, and he told me that if ever I dared to mention the army again he would give me a sound flogging.”“And you up and said you would like to catch him at it?” cried Punch excitedly. “No, Punch; but I lost my temper.”“Enough to make you! Then you knocked him down?”“No, Punch, but I told him he was forgetting the commands my father had given him, and that I would never go to the lawyer’s office again.”“Well, and what then?”“Then, Punch? Oh, I don’t like to talk about it. It makes me feel hot all over even to think.”“Of course it does. It makes me hot too; but then, you see, I’m weak. But do go on. What happened then?”“He knocked me down,” said the lad hoarsely.“Oh!” cried the boy, trying to spring up from his rough couch, but sinking back with the great beads of perspiration standing upon his brown forehead. “Don’t you tell me you stood that!”“No, Punch; I couldn’t. That night I went right away from home, just as I stood, made my way to London, and the next day I went to King Street, Westminster, and saw where the recruiting sergeants were marching up and down.”“I know,” cried the boy, “with their canes under their arms and their colours flying.”“Yes, Punch, and I picked out the one in the new regiment, the —th Rifles.”“Yes,” cried Punch, “the Rifle green with the red collars and cuffs.”Pen, half-excited by his recollections, half-amused at the boy’s intense interest, nodded again.“And took the king’s shilling,” cried Punch; “and I know, but I want you to tell me—you joined ours just to show that uncle that you wanted to serve the king, and not for the sake of the scarlet coat.”“Yes, Punch, that was why; and that’s all.”
“Ha, ha, ha, ha!” A bright, ringing specimen of a youth’s laugh, given out by one who is healthy, strong, and fairly content, allowing for drawbacks, with the utterer’s position in life.
“Whatcher laughing at?” followed in the querulous tones of one who was to a great extent at the opposite pole of life.
“You, Punch.”
“I don’t see nothing to laugh at, sick and weak as I am.”
“Yes, you are weak enough, and don’t know the difference as I do.”
“Difference! There ain’t no difference. I’m a regular invalid, as they calls them, and just as bad as some of our poor chaps who go back to live on the top of a wooden leg all the rest of their lives.”
“Stuff and nonsense, Punch! You are getting better and stronger every day.”
“I ain’t. Look at that arm; it’s as thin as a mop-stick.”
“Well, it is thin, certainly; but a chap of your age, growing fast, generally is thin.”
“Ya! Growing! How can a fellow grow with a hole in his back?”
“You haven’t got a hole in your back. It’s healing up fast.”
“’Taint.”
“Yes, it is. You haven’t seen it, and I have every day. I say it’s healing beautifully.”
“Ah, you’ll say next that I ain’t weak.”
“No, I shan’t.”
“Well, that’s because you are always trying to make me think that I am better than I am.”
“Well, what of that? I don’t want to put you out of heart.”
“No, but you needn’t gammon me. I know I ain’t as weak as a rat, because I am ten times weaker. I have got no wind at all; and I do wish you wouldn’t be always wallacking me down to that big waterfall. I’m always pumped out before I get half-way there, and quite done up before I get back. What’s the good of going there?”
“Beautiful place, Punchy, and the mountain air seems to come down with the water and fill you full of strength.”
“Does you perhaps, but it don’t do me no good. Beautiful place indeed! Ugly great hole!”
“’Tisn’t; it’s lovely. I don’t believe we shall ever see a more beautiful spot in our lives.”
“It makes me horrible. I feel sometimes as if I could jump in and put myself out of my misery. Just two steps, and a fellow would be washed away to nowhere.”
“Why, you have regularly got the grumps to-day, Punch; just, too, when you were getting better than ever.”
“I ain’t, I tell you. I had a look at myself this morning while you were snoring, and I am as thin as a scarecrow. My poor old mother wouldn’t know me again if ever I got back; and I sha’n’t never see our old place no more.”
“Yes, you will, Punch—grown up into a fine, manly-looking British rifleman, for you will be too big to blow your bugle then. You might believe me.”
“Bugle! Yes, I didn’t give it a rub yesterday. Just hand it off that peg.”
Pen reached the bugle from where it hung by its green cord, and the lines in Punch’s young forehead began to fade as he gave the instrument a touch with his sleeve, and then placed the mouthpiece to his lips, filled out his sadly pale, hollow cheeks, and looked as if he were going to blow with all his might, when he was checked by Pen clapping his hand over the glistening copper bell.
“Whatcher doing of?” cried the boy angrily.
“Stopping you. There, you see you are better. You couldn’t have attempted that a while ago.”
“Ya! Think I’m such a silly as to bring the enemy down upon us?”
“Well, I didn’t know.”
“Then you ought to. I should just like to give the call, though, to set our dear old lads going along the mountain-side there skirmishing and peppering the frog-eating warmints till they ran for their lives.”
“Hurrah!” shouted Pen. “Who’s trying to bring the enemy down upon us now, when we know there are some of them sneaking about in vedettes as they hold both ends of the valley. Now you say you are not better if you dare.”
“Oh, I don’t want to fall out,” grumbled the invalid. “You think you know, but you ain’t got a wound in your back to feel when a cold wind comes off the mountains. I think I ought to know best.”
“But you don’t, Punch. Those pains will die out in time, and you will go on growing, and keeping thin perhaps for a bit; but your muscles will fill out by-and-by, same as mine do in this beautiful air.”
“Needn’t be so precious proud of them,” said the boy sourly.
“I’m not. There, have another fish.”
“Sha’n’t. I’m sick to death on them. They are only Spanish or Portuguee trout, and not half so good as roach and dace out of a good old English pond.”
Pen laughed merrily again.
“Ah, grin away! I think I ought to know.”
“Yes—better than to grumble when I have broiled the fish so nicely over the wood embers with sticks I cut for skewers. They were delicious, and I ate till I felt ashamed.”
“So you ought to be.”
“To enjoy myself so,” continued Pen, “while you, with your mouth so out of taste and no appetite, could hardly eat a bit.”
“Well, who’s to have a happetite with a wound like mine? I shall never get no better till I get a mug of real old English beer.”
“Never mind; you get plenty of milk.”
“Ya! Nasty, sickly stuff! I’ll never touch it again.”
“Well then, beautiful sparkling water.”
“Who wants sparkling water? ’Tain’t like English. It’s so thin and cold.”
“Come, come; you must own that you are mending fast, Punch.”
“Who wants to be mended,” snarled the poor fellow, “and go through life like my old woman’s cracked chayney plate with the rivet in it! I was a strong lad once, and could beat any drummer in the regiment in a race, while now I ought to be in horspital.”
“No, you ought not. I’ll tell you what you want, Punch.”
“Oh, I know.”
“No, you don’t. You want to get just a little stronger, so as you can walk ten miles in a day.”
“Ten miles! Why, I used to do twenty easy.”
“So you will again, lad; but I mean in a night, for we shall have to lie up all day and march all night so as to keep clear of the enemy.”
“Then you mean for us to try and get out of this wretched hole?”
“I mean for us to go on tramp as soon as you are quite strong enough; and then you will think it’s a beautiful valley. Why, Punch, I have crept about here of a night while you have been asleep, so that I have got to know the place by heart, and I should like to have the chance of leading our fellows into places I know where they could hold it against ten times or twenty times their number of Frenchmen who might try to drive them out.”
“You have got to know that?” said Punch with a show of animation that had grown strange to the poor fellow.
“Yes,” cried Pen triumphantly.
“Well, then, all I have got to say is you waren’t playing fair.”
“Of course it wasn’t. Seeing you were so weak you couldn’t walk.”
“There now, you are laughing at a fellow; but you don’t play fair.”
“Don’t I? In what way?”
“Why, you promised while I have been so bad that you would read to me a bit.”
“And I couldn’t, Punch, because we have got nothing to read.”
“And then you promised that you would tell me how it was you come to take the king’s shilling.”
“Well, yes, I did; but you don’t want to know that.”
“Yes, I do. I have been wanting to know ever since.”
“Why, boy?”
“Because it seems so queer that a lad like you should join the ranks.”
“Why queer? You are too young yet, but you will be in the ranks some day as a full private.”
“Yes, some day; but then, you see, my father was a soldier. Yours warn’t, was he?”
“No-o,” said Pen, frowning and looking straight away before him out of the hut-door.
“Well, then, why don’t you speak out?”
“Because I don’t feel much disposed. It is rather a tender subject, Punch.”
“There, I always knew there was something. Look here; you and me’s friends and comrades, ain’t we?”
“I think so, Punch. I have tried to be.”
“So you have. Nobody could have been better. I have lain awake lots of times and thought about what you did. You haven’t minded my saying such nasty things as I have sometimes?”
“Not I, Punch. Sick people are often irritable.”
“Yes,” said the boy eagerly, “that’s it. I have said lots of things to you that I didn’t mean; but it’s when my back’s been very bad, and it seemed to spur me on to be spiteful, and I have been very sorry sometimes, only I was ashamed to tell you. But you haven’t done anything to be ashamed of?” Pen was silent for a few moments.
“Ashamed? No—yes.”
“Well, you can’t have been both,” said the boy. “Whatcher mean by that?”
“There have been times, Punch, when I have felt ashamed of what I have done.”
“Why, what have you done? I don’t believe it was ever anything bad. You say what it was. I’ll never tell.”
“Enlisted for a soldier.”
“What?” cried the boy. “Why, that ain’t nothing to be ashamed of. What stuff! Why, that’s something to be proud of, specially in our Rifles. In the other regiments we have got out here the lads are proud of being in scarlet. Let ’em. But I know better. There isn’t one of them who wouldn’t be proud to be in our dark-green, and to shoulder a rifle. Besides, we have got our bit of scarlet on the collar and cuffs, and that’s quite enough. Why, you are laughing at me! You couldn’t be ashamed of being in our regiment. I know what it was—you ran away from home?”
“It was no longer home to me, Punch.”
“Why, didn’t you live there?”
“Yes; but it didn’t seem like home any longer. It was like this, Punch. My father and mother had died.”
“Oh,” said the boy softly, “that’s bad. Very good uns, waren’t they?”
Pen bowed his head.
“Then it waren’t your home any longer?”
“Yes and no, Punch,” said the lad gravely.
“There you go again! Don’t aggravate a fellow when he is sick and weak. I ain’t a scholar like you, and when you puts it into me with your ‘yes and no’ it makes my head ache. It can’t be yes and no too.”
“Well, Punch,” said Pen, smiling, “it was mine by rights, but I was under age.”
“What’s under age?”
“Not twenty-one.”
“Of course not. You told me months ago that you was only eighteen. Anybody could see that, because you ain’t got no whiskers. But what has that got to do with it?”
“Well, I don’t see why I should tell you all this, Punch, for it’s all about law.”
“But I want to know,” said the boy, “because it’s all about you.”
“Well, it’s like this: my father left my uncle to be executor and my trustee.”
“Oh, I say, whatcher talking about? You said your father was a good un, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“Well, then, he couldn’t have left your uncle to be your executioner when you hadn’t done nothing.”
“Executor, Punch,” said the lad, laughing.
“Well, that’s what I said, didn’t I?”
“No; that’s a very different thing. An executor is one who executes.”
“Well, I know that. Hangs people who ain’t soldiers, and shoots them as is. Court-martial, you know.”
“Punch, you are getting in a muddle.”
“Glad of it,” said the boy, “for I thought it was, and I don’t like to hear you talk like that.”
“Then let’s put it right. An executor is one who executes the commands of a person who is dead.”
“Oh, I see,” said the boy. “Dead without being executed.”
“Look here, Punch,” said Pen, laughing, “you had better be still and listen, and I will try and make it plain to you. My uncle was my father’s executor, who had to see that the property he left was rightfully distributed.”
“Oh, I see,” said Punch.
“And my father made him my trustee, to take charge of the money that was to be mine when I became twenty-one.”
“All right; go on. I am getting it now.”
“Then he had to see to my education, and advise me till I grew up.”
“Well, that was all right, only if I had been your old man, seeing what a chap you are, I shouldn’t have called in no uncle. I should have said, ‘Young Penton Gray has got his head screwed on proper, and he will do what’s right.’ I suppose, then, your uncle didn’t.”
“I thought not, Punch.”
“Then, of course, he didn’t. What did he do, then?”
“Made me leave school,” said Pen.
“Oh, well, that don’t sound very bad. Made you leave school? Well, I never was at school but once, but I’d have given anything to be made to come away.”
“Ah, perhaps you would, Punch. But then there are schools and schools.”
“Well, I know that,” said the boy irritably; “but don’t tease a fellow, it makes me so wild now I’m all weak like.”
“Well, then, let’s say no more about it.”
“What! Leave off telling of me?”
“Yes, while you are irritable.”
“I ain’t irritable; not a bit. It’s only that I want to know.”
“Very well, then, Punch; I will cut it short.”
“No, you don’t, so come now! You promised to tell me all about it, so play fair.”
“Very well, then, you must listen patiently.”
“That’s what I’m a-doing of, only you will keep talking in riddles like about your executioners and trustees. I want you to tell me just in plain English.”
“Very well, then, Punch. I was at a military school, and I didn’t want to be fetched away.”
“Oh, I see,” cried the boy. “You mean one of them big schools where they makes young officers?”
“Yes.”
“Like Woolwich and Addiscombe?”
“Yes.”
“You were going to be a soldier, then—I mean, an officer?”
“An officer is a soldier, Punch.”
“Of course he is. Oh, well, I don’t wonder you didn’t want to be fetched away. Learning to be an officer, eh? That’s fine. Didn’t your uncle want you to be a soldier, then?”
“No. He wanted me to go as a private pupil with a lawyer.”
“What, and get to be a lawyer?” cried the boy excitedly. “Oh, I say, you weren’t going to stand that?”
“No, Punch. Perhaps I should have obeyed him, only I knew that it had always been my father’s wish that I should go into the army, and he had left the money for my education and to buy a commission when I left the military school.”
“Here, I know,” cried the boy excitedly; “you needn’t tell me no more. I heard a story once about a wicked uncle. I know—your one bought the commission and kept it for himself.”
“No, Punch; that wouldn’t work out right. When I begged him to let me stay at the military school he mocked at me, and laughed, and said that my poor father must have been mad to think of throwing away money like that; and over and over again he insisted that I should go on with my studies of the law, and give up all notion of wearing a red coat, for he could see that that was all I thought about.”
“Well?” said the boy.
“Well, Punch?”
“And then you punched his head, and ran away from home.”
“No, I did not.”
“Then you ought to have done. I would if anybody said my poor father was mad; and, besides, your uncle must have been a bad un to want to make you a lawyer. I suppose he was a lawyer too.”
“Yes.”
“There, if I didn’t think so! But he must have been a bad un. Said you wanted to be a soldier so as to wear the uniform? Well, if you did want to, that’s only nat’ral. A soldier’s always proud of his uniform. I heard our colonel say that it was the king’s livery and something to be proud on. I am proud of mine, even if it has got a bit raggy-taggy with sleeping out in it in all sorts of weather, and rooshing through bushes and mud, and crossing streams. But soldiers don’t think of that sort of thing, and we shall all have new things served out by-and-by. Well, go on.”
“Oh, that’s about all, Punch.”
“You get on. I know better. Tain’t half all. I want you to come to the cutting off and taking the shilling.”
“Oh, you want to hear that?”
“Why, of course I do. Why, it’s all the juicy part. Don’t hang fire. Let’s have it with a rush now. Fix bayonets, and at them!”
“Why, Punch,” said Pen, laughing, “don’t you tell me again that you are not getting better!”
“I waren’t going to now. This warms a fellow up a bit. I say, your uncle is a bad un, and no mistake. There, forward!”
“But I have nearly told all, Punch. Life got so miserable at home, and I was so sick of the law, that I led such a life with my uncle through begging him to let me go back to the school, that he, one day—”
“Well, whatcher stopping for?” cried the boy, whose cheeks were flushed and eyes sparkling with excitement.
“I don’t like talking about it,” replied Pen. “I suppose I was wrong, for my father had left all the management of my affairs in his brother-in-law’s hands.”
“Why, you said your uncle’s hands just now!”
“Yes, Punch; in my mother’s brother’s hands, so he was my uncle.”
“Well, go on.”
“And I had been begging him to alter his plans.”
“Yes, and let you go back to the school?”
“And I suppose he was tired out with what he called my obstinacy, and he told me that if ever I dared to mention the army again he would give me a sound flogging.”
“And you up and said you would like to catch him at it?” cried Punch excitedly. “No, Punch; but I lost my temper.”
“Enough to make you! Then you knocked him down?”
“No, Punch, but I told him he was forgetting the commands my father had given him, and that I would never go to the lawyer’s office again.”
“Well, and what then?”
“Then, Punch? Oh, I don’t like to talk about it. It makes me feel hot all over even to think.”
“Of course it does. It makes me hot too; but then, you see, I’m weak. But do go on. What happened then?”
“He knocked me down,” said the lad hoarsely.
“Oh!” cried the boy, trying to spring up from his rough couch, but sinking back with the great beads of perspiration standing upon his brown forehead. “Don’t you tell me you stood that!”
“No, Punch; I couldn’t. That night I went right away from home, just as I stood, made my way to London, and the next day I went to King Street, Westminster, and saw where the recruiting sergeants were marching up and down.”
“I know,” cried the boy, “with their canes under their arms and their colours flying.”
“Yes, Punch, and I picked out the one in the new regiment, the —th Rifles.”
“Yes,” cried Punch, “the Rifle green with the red collars and cuffs.”
Pen, half-excited by his recollections, half-amused at the boy’s intense interest, nodded again.
“And took the king’s shilling,” cried Punch; “and I know, but I want you to tell me—you joined ours just to show that uncle that you wanted to serve the king, and not for the sake of the scarlet coat.”
“Yes, Punch, that was why; and that’s all.”