PUT TO THE QUESTION.
INthe chaste retirement of his sick room the Field-Marshal had just reached this conclusion, when he heard a noise in the hall. There was a sound of the gruff unmirthful voices of grown-ups, a scuffling of feet, a planting of whips and walking-sticks on the zinc-bottomed hall-stand, and then, after a pause which meant drinks, heavy footsteps in the passage which led to the hero's chamber.
Hugh John snatched up Sambo Soulis and thrust him deep beneath the bedclothes, where he could readily push him over the end with his toes, if it should chance to be "the doctor-beast" come to uncover him and "fool with the bandages." I have said enough to show that the General was not only frankly savage in sentiment, but resembledhis great imperial namesake in being grateful only when it suited him.
Before General Napoleon had his toes fairly settled over the back of Sambo Soulis' neck, so as to be able to remove him out of harm's way on any sudden alarm, the door opened and his father came in, ushering two men, the first of whom came forward to the bedside in an easy, kindly manner, and held out his hand.
"Do you know me?" he said, giving Hugh John's second sorest hand such a squeeze that the wounded hero was glad it was not the very sorest one.
"Yes," replied the hero promptly, "you are Sammy Carter's father. I can jolly well lick——"
"Hugh John," interrupted his father severely, "remember what you are saying to Mr. Davenant Carter."
"Well, anyway, Icanlick Sammy Carter till he's dumb-sick!" muttered the General between his teeth, as he avoided the three pairs of eyes that were turned upon him.
"Oh, let him say just what he likes!" said Mr. Davenant Carter jovially. "Sammy is the better of being licked, if that is what the boy was going to say. I sometimes try my hand at it myself with some success."
The other man who had come in with Mr. Smith was a thick-set fellow of middle height, with a curious air of being dressed up in somebody else's clothes. Yet they fitted him very well. He wore on his face (in addition to a slight moustache) an expression which somehow made Hugh Johnthink guiltily of all the orchards he had ever visited along with Toady Lion and Sammy Carter's sister Cissy, who was "no end of a nice girl" in Hugh John's estimation.
"This, Hugh," said his father, with a little wave of his hand, "is Mr. Mant, the Chief Constable of the county. Mr. Carter and he have come to ask you a few questions, which you will answer at once."
"I won't be dasht-mean!" muttered Napoleon Smith to himself.
"What's that?" ejaculated Mr. Smith, catching the echo of his son's rumble of dissent.
"Only my leg that hurted," said the hypocritical hero of battles.
"Don't you think we should have the other children here?" said Mr. Chief Constable Mant, speaking for the first time in a gruff, move-on-there voice.
"Certainly," assented Mr. Smith, going to the door. "Janet!"
"Yes, sir!"
The answer came from immediately behind the door.
The Field-Marshal's brow darkened, or rather it would have done so if there had been no white bandages over it. This is the correct expression anyhow—though ordinary brows but seldom behave in this manner.
"Prissy's all right," he thought to himself, "but if that little fool Toady Lion——"
And he clenched his second sorest hand under the clothes, and kicked Sambo Soulis to the foot of the bed in a way which augured but little mercy to Sir Toady Lion if, after all his training, heshould turn out "dasht-mean" in the hour of trial.
Presently the other two children were pushed in at the door, Toady Lion trying a bolt at the last moment, which Janet Sheepshanks easily foiled by catching at the slack of his trousers behind, while Prissy stood holding her hands primly as if in Sunday-school class. Both afforded to the critical eye of Hugh John complete evidence that they had only just escaped from the Greater Pain of the comb and soaped flannel-cloth of Janet Sheepshanks. Prissy's curls were still wet and smoothed out, and Toady Lion was trying in vain to rub the yellow soap out of his eyes.
So at the headquarters of its general, the army of Windy Standard formed up. Sir Toady Lion wished to get within supporting distance of Prissy, and accordingly kept snuggling nearer all the time, so that he could get a furtive hold of her skirts at awkward places in the examination. This he could do the more easily that General Field-Marshal Smith was prevented by the bandages over his right eye, and also by the projecting edges of the pillow, from seeing Toady Lion's left hand.
"Now, Priscilla," began her father, "tell Mr. Davenant Carter and Mr. Mant what happened in the castle, and the names of any of the bad boys who stole your pet lamb."
"Wasn't no lamb—Donald was a sheep, and he could fight," began Toady Lion, without relevance, but with his usual eagerness to hear the sound of his own piping voice. In his zeal hetook a step forward and so brought himself on the level of the eye of his general, who from the pillow darted upon him a look so freezing that Sir Toady Lion instantly fell back into the ranks, and clutched Prissy's skirt with such energy as almost to stagger her severe deportment.
"Now," said the Chief Constable of Bordershire, "tell me what were the names of the assailants."
He was listening to the tale as told by Prissy with his note-book ready in his hand, occasionally biting at the butt of the pencil, and anon wetting the lead in his mouth, under the mistaken idea that by so doing he improved its writing qualities.
"I think," began Prissy, "that they were——"
"A-chew!" came from the bed and from under the bandages with a sudden burst of sound. Field-Marshal Napoleon Smith had sneezed. That was all.
But Prissy started. She knew what it meant. It was the well-known signal not to commit herself under examination.
Her father looked round at the open windows.
"Are you catching cold with the draught, Hugh John?" he asked kindly.
"I think I have a little cold," said the wily General, who did not wish all the windows to be promptly shut.
"Don't know all their names, but the one that hurted me was——" began Toady Lion.
But who the villain was will never be known, for at that moment the bedclothes became violently disturbed immediately in front of Sir ToadyLion's nose. A fearful black countenance nodded once at him and disappeared.
"Black Sambo!" gasped Toady Lion, awed by the terrible appearance, and falling back from the place where the wizard had so suddenly appeared.
"What did I understand you to say, little boy?" said Mr. Mant, with his pencil on his book.
"Ow—it was Black Sambo!" Toady Lion almost screamed. Mr. Mant gravely noted the fact.
"What in the world does he mean?" asked Mr. Mant, casting his eyes searchingly from Prissy to General Napoleon and back again.
"He means 'Black Sambo'!" said Prissy, devoting herself strictly to facts, and leaving the Chief Constable to his proper business of interpreting them.
"What is his other name?" said Mr. Mant.
"Soulis!" said General Smith from the bed.
The three gentlemen looked at each other, smiled, and shook their heads.
"What did I tell you?" said Mr. Davenant Carter. "Try as I will, I cannot get the simplest thing out of my Sammy and Cissy if they don't choose to tell."
Nevertheless Mr. Smith, being a sanguine man and with little experience of children, tried again.
"There is no black boy in the neighbourhood," said Mr. Smith severely; "now tell the truth, children—at once, when I bid you!"
He uttered the last words in a loud and commanding tone.
"Us is telling the troof, father dear," said Toady Lion, in the "coaxy-woaxy" voice whichhe used when he wanted marmalade from Janet or a ride on the saddle from Mr. Picton Smith.
"Perhaps the boy had blackened his face to deceive the eye," suggested Mr. Mant, with the air of one familiar from infancy with the tricks and devices of the evil-minded of all ages.
"Was the ringleader's face blackened?—Answer at once!" said Mr. Smith sternly.
The General extracted his bruised and battered right hand from under the clothes and looked at it.
"I think so," he said, "leastways some has come off on my knuckles!"
Mr. Davenant Carter burst into a peal of jovial mirth.
"Didn't I tell you?—It isn't a bit of use badgering children when they don't want to tell. Let's go over to the castle."
And with that the three gentlemen went out, while Napoleon Smith, Prissy, and Sir Toady Lion were left alone.
The General beckoned them to his bedside with his nose—quite an easy thing to do if you have the right kind of nose, which Hugh John had.
"Now look here," he said, "if you'd told, I'd have jolly well flattened you when I got up. 'Tisn't our business to tell p'leecemen things."
"That wasn't a p'leeceman," said Sir Toady Lion, "hadn't no shiny buttons."
"That's the worst kind," said the General in a low, hissing whisper; "all the same you stood to it like bricks, and now I'm going to get well and begin on the campaign at once."
"Don't you be greedy-teeth and eat it allyourself!" interjected Toady Lion, who thought that the campaign was something to eat, and that it sounded good.
"What are you going to do?" said Prissy, who had a great belief in the executive ability of her brother.
"I know their secret hold," said General-Field-Marshal Smith grandly, "and in the hour of their fancied security we will fall upon them and——"
"And what?" gasped Prissy and Toady Lion together, awaiting the revelation of the horror.
"Destroy them!" said General Smith, in a tone which was felt by all parties to be final.
He laid himself back on his pillow and motioned them haughtily away. Prissy and Sir Toady Lion retreated on tiptoe, lest Janet should catch them and send them to the parlour—Prissy to read her chapter, and her brother along with her to keep him out of mischief.
And so the great soldier was left to his meditations in the darkened hospital chamber.
A SCOUTING ADVENTURE.
GENERAL SMITH, having now partially recovered, was mustering his forces and arranging his plans of campaign. He had spoken no hasty word when he boasted that he knew the secret haunt of the robbers. For, some time before, during a brief but glorious career as a pirate, he had been brought into connection with Nipper Donnan, the strongest butcher's boy of the town, and the ringleader in all mischief, together with Joe Craig, Nosie Cuthbertson, and Billy M'Robert, his ready followers.
Hugh John had once been a member of the Comanche Cowboys, as Nipper Donnan's band was styled; but a disagreement about the objects of attack had hastened a rupture, and the affairof the castle was but the last act in a hostility long latent. In fact the war was always simmering, and was ready to boil over on the slightest provocation. For when Hugh John found that his father's orchards, his father's covers and hencoops were to be the chief prey (being safer than the farmers' yards, where there were big dogs always loose, and the town streets, where "bobbies" mostly congregated), he struck. He reflected that one day all these things would belong to himself. He would share with Prissy and Sir Toady Lion, of course; but still mainly they would belong to him. Why then plunder them now? The argument was utilitarian but sufficient.
Though he did not mention the fact to Prissy or Sir Toady Lion, Hugh John was perfectly well acquainted with the leaders in the fray at the castle. He knew also that there were motives for the enmity of the Comanche Cowboys other and deeper than the town rights to the possession of the Castle of Windy Standard.
It was night when Hugh John cautiously pushed up the sash of his window and looked out. A few stars were high up aloft wandering through the grey-blue fields of the summer night, as it were listlessly and with their hands in their pockets. A corn-crake cried in the meadow down below, steadily, remorselessly, like the aching of a tooth. A white owl passed the window with an almost noiseless whiff of fluffy feathers. Hugh John sniffed the cool pungent night smell of the dew on the near wet leaves and the distant mown grass. It always went to his head a little, andwas the only thing which made him regret that he was to be a soldier. Whenever he smelt it, he wanted to be an explorer of far-off lands, or an honest poacher—even a gamekeeper might do, in case the other vocations proved unattainable.
Hugh John got out of the window slowly, leaving Sir Toady Lion asleep and the door into Prissy's room wide open. He dropped easily and lightly upon the roof of the wash-house, and, steadying himself upon the tiles, he slid down till he heard Cæsar, the black Newfoundland, stir in his kennel. Then he called him softly, so that he might not bark. He could not take him with him to-night, for though Cæsar was little more than a puppy his step was like that of a cow, and when released he went blundering end on through the woods like a festive avalanche. Hugh John's father, for reasons of his own, persisted in calling him "The Potwalloping Elephant."
So, having assured himself that Cæsar would not bark, the boy dropped to the ground, taking the roof of the dog-kennel on the way. Cæsar stirred, rolled himself round, and came out breathing hard, and thump-thumping Hugh John's legs with his thick tail, with distinctly audible blows.
Then when he understood that he was not to be taken, he sat down at the extremity of his chain and regarded his master wistfully through the gloom with his head upon one side; and as Hugh John took his way down the avenue, Cæsar moaned a little, intoning his sense of injury and disappointment as the parson does a litany.
At the first turn of the road Hugh John hadjust time to dart aside into the green, acrid-scented, leathery-leaved shrubbery, where he lay crouched with his hands on his knees and his head thrust forward, while Tom the keeper went slowly by with his arm about Jane Housemaid's waist.
"WAIT TILL THE NEXT TIME YOU WON'T LEND ME THE FERRET, TOM CANNON! O-HO, JANE HOUSEMAID, WILL YOU TELL MY FATHER THE NEXT TIME I TAKE YOUR DUST SCOOP?"
"Aha!" chuckled Hugh John; "wait till the next time you won't lend me the ferret, Tom Cannon! O-ho, Jane Housemaid, will you tell my father the next time I take your dust scoop out to the sand-hole to help dig trenches? I think not!"
And Hugh John hugged himself in his pleasureat having a new weapon so admirably double-barrelled. He looked upon the follies of love, as manifested in the servants' hall and upon the outskirts of the village, as so much excellent material by which a wise man would not fail to profit. Janet Sheepshanks was very severe on such delinquencies, and his father—well, Hugh John felt that Tom Cannon would not wish to appear before his master in such a connection. He had a vague remembrance of a certain look he had once seen on his father's face when Allan Chestney, the head-keeper, came out from Mr. Picton Smith's workroom with these words ringing in his ear, "Now, sir, you will do as I tell you, or I will give you a character—but, such a character as you will carry through the world with you, and which will be buried with you when you die."
Allan was now married to Jemima, who had once been cook at the house of Windy Standard. Hugh John went over to their cottage often to eat her delicious cakes; and when Allan came in from the woods, his wife ordered him to take off his dirty boots before he entered her clean kitchen. Then Allan Chestney would re-enter and play submissively and furtively with Patty Pans, their two-year-old child, shifting his chair obediently whenever Cook Jemima told him. But all the same, Hugh John felt dimly that these things would not have happened, save for the look on his father's face when Allan Chestney went in to see him that day in the grim pine-boarded workroom.
So, much lightened in his mind by his discovery, Hugh John took his way down the avenue. Atthe foot of it, and before he came to the locked white gate and the cottage of Betty, he turned aside through a copse, over a little green patch of sward on which his feet slid smooth as velvet. A hare sat on the edge of this, with her fore-feet in the air. She was for the moment so astonished at Hugh John's appearance that it was an appreciable period of time before she turned, and with a quick, sidelong rush disappeared into the wood. He could hear the soughing rush of the river below him, which took different keys according to the thickness of the tree copses which were folded about it; now singing gaily through the thin birches and rowans; anon humming more hoarsely through the alders; again rustling and whispering mysteriously through the grey shivery poplars; and, last of all, coming up, dull and sullen, through the heavy oak woods, whose broad leaves cover all noises underneath them as a blanket muffles speech.
Hugh John skirted the river till he came to the stepping-stones, which he crossed with easy confidence. He knew them—high, low, Jack, and game, like the roofs of his father's outhouses. He could just as easily have gone across blindfold.
Then he made his way over the wide, yellowish-grey spaces of the castle island, avoiding the copses of willow and dwarf birch, and the sandy-bottomed "bunkers," which ever and anon gleamed up before him like big tawny eyes out of the dusky grey-green of the short grass. After a little the walls of the old castle rose grimly before him, and he could hear the starlings scolding one anothersleepily high up in the crevices. A black-cap piped wistfully among the sedges of the watermarsh. Hugh John had often heard that the ruin was haunted, and certainly he always held his breath as he passed it. But now he was on duty, and, if need had been, he would that night have descended to the deepest dungeon, and faced a full Banquo-board of blood-boltered ghosts.
ENEMY'S COUNTRY.
HEpresently came to the wooden bridge and crossed it. He was now on the outskirts of the town, and in enemy's country. So, more from etiquette than precaution, he took the shelter of a wall, glided through a plantation, among the withy roots of which his foot presently caught in a brass "grin," or rabbit's snare. Hugh John grubbed it up gratefully and pocketed it. He had no objections whatever to spoiling the Egyptians.
He was now in butcher Donnan's pastures, where many fore-doomed sheep, in all the bliss of ignorance, waited their turns to be made into mutton. Very anxiously Hugh John scrutinised each one. He wandered round and round till he had made certain that Donald was not there.
At the foot of the pasture were certain black-pitched wooden sheds set in a square, with a little yard like a church pew in the midst. Somewhere here, he knew, slept Donnan's slaughterman, and it was possible that in this place Donald might be held in captivity.
Now it was an accomplishment of our hero's that he could bleat like any kind of sheep—except perhaps an old tup, for which his voice was as yet too shrill. In happy, idle days he had elaborated a code of signals with Donald, and was well accustomed to communicating with him from his bedroom window. So now he crouched in the dusk of the hedge, and said "Maa-aaa!" in a tone of reproach.
Instantly a little answering bleat came from the black sheds, a sound which made Hugh's heart beat faster. Still he could not be quite sure. He therefore bleated again more pleadingly, and again there came back the answer, choked and feeble indeed, but quite obviously the voice of his own dear Donald. Hugh John cast prudence to the winds. He raced round and climbed the bars into the enclosure, calling loudly, "Donald! Donald!"
But hardly had his feet touched the ground when a couple of dogs flew at him from the corner of the yard, and he had scarcely time to get on the top of a stone wall before they were clamouring and yelping beneath him. Hugh John crouched on his "hunkers" (as he called the posture in which one sits on a wall when hostile dogs are leaping below), and seizing a large coping-stone he dropped it as heavily as he could on the head of the nearer and more dangerous. A howl most lamentable immediately followed. Then a man's voice cried, "Down, Towser! What's the matter, Grip? Sic' them! Good dogs!"
It was the voice of the slaughterman, roused from his slumbers, and in fear of tramps or other midnight marauders upon his master's premises.
Hugh ran on all fours along the wall to the nearest point of the woods, dropped over, and with a leaping, anxious heart sped in the direction of home. He crossed the bridge in safety, but as he ran across the island he could hear the dogs upon the trail and the encouraging shouts of his pursuer. The black looming castle fell swiftly behind him. Now he was at the stepping-stones, over which he seemed to float rather than leap, so completely had fear added to his usual strength wings of swiftness.
But at the farther side the dogs were close upon him. He was obliged to climb a certain low tree, where he had often sat dangling his legs and swinging in the branches while he allowed Prissy to read to him.
The dogs were soon underneath, and he could see them leaping upward with snapping white teeth which gleamed unpleasantly through the darkness. But their furious barking was promptly answered. Hugh John could hear a heavy tread approaching among the dense foliage of the trees. A dark form suddenly appeared in the glade and poised something at its shoulder.—Flash! There came a deafening report, the thresh of leaden drops, a howl of pain from the dogs, and both ofthem took their way back towards the town with not a few bird shot in their flanks.
Hugh John's heart stood still as the dark figure advanced. He feared it might prove to be his father. Instead it was Tom Cannon, and the brave scout on the tree heaved a sigh of relief.
"Who's up there?" cried the under-keeper gruffly; "come down this moment and show yourself, you dirty poacher, or by Heaven I'll shoot you sitting!"
"All right, Tom, I'm coming as fast as I can," said Hugh John, beginning to clamber down.
"Heavens and earth, Master Hugh—what be you doing here? Whatever will master say?"
"He won't say anything, for he won't know, Tom Cannon." said Hugh John confidently.
"Oh yes, he will," said the keeper. "I won't have you bringing a pack of dogs into my covers at twelve of the clock—blow me if I will!"
"Well, you won't tell my father, anyway!" said Hugh John calmly, dusting himself as well as he could.
"And why not?" asked the keeper indignantly.
"'Cause if you do, I'll tell where I saw you kissing Jane Housemaid an hour ago!"
Now this was at once a guess and an exaggeration. Hugh John had not seen all this, but he felt rather than knew that the permitted arm about Jane Housemaid's waist could have no other culmination. Also he had a vague sense that this was the most irritating thing he could say in the circumstances.
At any rate Tom Cannon fairly gasped withastonishment. A double-jointed word slipped between his teeth, which sounded like "Hang that boy!" At last his seething thoughts found utterance.
"You young imp of Satan—it ain't true, anyway."
"All right, you can tell my father that!" said Hugh John coolly, feeling the strength of his position.
Tom Cannon was not much frightened for himself, but he did not wish to get Jane Housemaid into any trouble, for, as he well knew, that young woman had omitted to ask for leave of absence. So he only said, "All right, it's none of my business if you wander over every acre, and break your neck off every tree on the blame estate. But you'd better be getting home before master comes out and catches you himself! Then you'd eat strap, my lad!"
So having remade the peace, Tom escorted Hugh John back to the dog kennel with great good nature, and even gave him a leg up to the roof above the palace of Cæsar.
Hugh John paused as he put one foot into the bedroom, heavy and yet homelike with the night smell of a sleeping house. Toady Lion had fallen out of bed and lay, still with his blanket wrapped round him like a martial cloak, half under his cot and half on the floor. But this he did every other night. Prissy was breathing quietly in the next room. All was safe.
Hugh John called softly down, "Tom, Tom!"
"What now?" returned the keeper, who hadbeen spying along the top windows to distinguish a certain one dear to his heart.
"I say, Tom—I'll tell Jane Housemaid to-morrow that you're a proper brick."
"Thank'ee, sir!" said Tom, saluting gravely and turning off across the lawn towards the "bothy," where among the pine woods he kept his owl-haunted bachelor quarters.
MOBILISATION.
GENERALLYspeaking, Hugh John despised Sammy Carter—first, because he could lick him with one hand, and, secondly, because Sammy Carter was a clever boy and could discover ways of getting even without licking him. Clever boys are all cheeky and need hammering. Besides, Sammy Carter was in love with Prissy, and every one knew what that meant. But then Sammy Carter had a sister, Cissy by name, and she was quite a different row of beans.
Furthermore, Sammy Carter read books—a degrading pursuit, unless they had to do with soldiering, and especially with the wars of Napoleon,Hugh John's great ancestor. In addition, Sammy knew every date that was, and would put you right in a minute if you said that Bannockburn happened after Waterloo, or any little thing like that. A disposition so perverse as this could only be cured with a wicket or with Hugh John's foot, and our hero frequently applied both corrections.
But Cissy Carter—ah! now there was a girl if you like. She never troubled about such things. She could not run so fast as Prissy, but then she had a perfect colt's mane of hair, black and glossy, which flew out behind her when she did. Moreover, she habitually did what Hugh John told her, and burned much incense at his shrine, so that modest youth approved of her. It was of her he first thought when he set about organising his army for the assault upon the Black Sheds, where, like Hofer at Mantua, the gallant Donald lay in chains.
But it was written in the chronicles of Oaklands that Cissy Carter could not be allowed over the river without Sammy, so Sammy would have to be permitted to join too. Hugh John resolved that he would keep his eye very sharply upon Prissy and Sammy Carter, for the abandoned pair had been known to compose poetry in the heat of an engagement, and even to read their compositions to one another on the sly. For this misdemeanour Prissy would certainly have been court-martialled, only that her superior officer could not catch her at the time. But the wicked did not wholly escape, for Hugh John tugged her hair afterwards till she cried; whereat Janet Sheepshanks, coming suddenly upon him and corneringhim, spanked him tillhecried. He cried solely as a measure of military necessity, because it was the readiest way of getting Janet to stop, and also because that day Janet wore a new pair of slippers, with heels upon which Hugh John had not been counting. So he cried till he got out of Janet's reach, when he put out his tongue at her and said, "Hum-m! Thought you hurt, didn't you? Well, it just didn't a bit!"
And Sir Toady Lion, who was feeding his second-best wooden horses with wild sand-oats gathered green, remarked, "When I have childwens I sail beat them wif a big boot and tackets in the heel."
Which voiced with great precision Janet Sheepshanks' mood at that moment.
The army of Windy Standard, then, when fully mustered, consisted of General-Field-Marshal Napoleon Smith, Commander-in-Chief and regimental Sergeant-Major (also, on occasions of parade, Big Big-Drummer); Adjutant-General Cissy Carter, promoted to her present high position for always agreeing with her superior officer—a safe rule in military politics; Commissariat-Sergeant Sir Toady Lion, who declined any other post than the care of the provisions, and had to be conciliated; together with Privates Sammy Carter and Prissy Smith. Sammy Carter had formerly been Adjutant, because he had a pony, but gallantly resigned in order to be of the same rank as Prissy, who was the sole member of the force wholly without military ambition.
At the imposing review which was held on theplains of Windy Standard, the Commander-in-Chief insisted on carrying the blue banner himself, as well as the big-big drum, till Sammy Carter, who had not yet resigned, offered him his pony to ride upon. This he did with guile and malice aforethought, for on the drum being elevated in front of the mounted officer, Polo promptly ran away, and deposited General-Field-Marshal Smith in the horse pond.
"DEPOSITED GENERAL-FIELD-MARSHAL SMITH IN THE HORSE POND."
But this force, though officered with consummate ability, was manifestly insufficient for the attack upon the Black Sheds. This was well shownby Sammy Carter, who also pointed out that the armies of all ages had never been exclusively composed of those of noble birth. There were, for example, at Bannockburn, the knights, the esquires, the sturdy yeomanry, the spearmen, the bowmen, and the camp-followers. He advised that the stable boys, Mike and Peter, should be approached.
Now the head stable boy, Mike O'Donelly by name, was a scion of the noblest Bourbon race. His father was an exile, who spoke the language with a strong foreign accent, and drove a fish cart—which also had a pronounced accent, reputed deadly up to fifty yards with a favourable wind.
"Foine frish hirrings—foive for sixpince!" was the way he said it. This proved to demonstration that he came from a far land, and was the descendant of kings. When taxed directly with being the heir to a crown, he did not deny it, but said, "Yus, Masther Smith, wanst I had a crown, but I lost it. 'Twas the Red Lion, bad scran to ut, that did the deed!"
Now this was evidently only a picturesque and regal way of referring to the bloody revolution by which King Michael O'Donowitch had been dethroned and reduced to driving a fish-cart—the old, old story, doubtless, of royal license and popular ingratitude. But there was no such romantic mystery about Peter Greg. He was simply junior stable boy, and his father was general utility man—or, as it was more generally called, "odd man," about the estate of Windy Standard. Peter occupied most of his time in keeping one eye on his work and the other on his father, who, on general utilityprinciples, "welted" him every time that he caught him. This exercise, and his other occupation of perpetual fisticuffs with Prince Mike O'Donelly, had so developed his muscles and trained his mind, that he could lick any other two boys of his size in the parish. He said so himself, and he usually had at least one black eye to show for it. So no one contradicted him, and, indeed, who had a better right to know?
Prince Michael O'Donowitch (the improvement in style was Sammy Carter's) put the matter differently. He said, "I can lick Peter Greg till he can't stand" ("shtand" was how the royal exile pronounced it), "but Peter an' me can knock the stuffin' out of any half-dozen spalpeens in this dirthy counthry."
Both Mike and Peter received commissions in the army at the same moment. The ceremony took place at the foot of the great hay mow at the back of the stable yard. In view of his noble ancestry, Prince Michael O'Donowitch was made a major-general, and Peter a lieutenant of marines. The newly appointed officers instantly clinched, fell headlong, rolled over and over one another, pommelled each other's heads, bit, scratched, and kicked till the hay and straw flew in all directions.
When the dust finally cleared away, Peter was found sitting astride of Prince Michael, and shouting, "Are you the general-major, or am I?"
Then when they had risen to their feet and dusted themselves, it was found that the distinguished officers had exchanged commissions, and that Peter Greg had become major-general,while Prince Michael O'Donowitch was lieutenant of marines, with a new and promising black eye!
"GENERALS OF DIVISION, EQUAL IN RANK."
But at the first drill, upon General Peter issuing some complicated order, such as "Attention! eyes right!" Lieutenant O'Donowitch remarked, "Me eyes is as roight as yours, ye dirthy baste av aScotchy!" Whereupon, as the result of another appeal to arms, the former judgment was reversed, and Prince Michael regained his commission at the price of another black eye. Indeed he would have had three, but for the fact that the number of his eyes was somewhat strictly limited to two.
Now it was felt by all parties that in a well-disciplined army such transitions were altogether too sudden, and so a compromise was suggested—as usual by Sammy Carter. Prince Michael and Peter Greg were both made generals of division, equal in rank, under Field-Marshal Smith. The division commanded by General Peter was composed of Cissy and Sir Toady Lion. The command of this first division proved, however, to be purely nominal, for Cissy was much too intimate with the Commander-in-Chief to be ordered about, and as for Toady Lion he was so high minded and irresponsible that he quite declined to obey anybody whatsoever. Still, the title was the thing, and "the division of General Peter Greg" sounded very well.
The other division was much more subordinate. Prissy and Sammy Carter were the only genuine privates, and they were quite ready to be commanded by General Mike, Prissy upon conscientious non-resistance principles, and Sammy with a somewhat humorous aside to his fellow-soldier that it wouldn't be very bad, because Mike's father (the royal fish-hawker) lived on Sammy's ancestral domain, and owed money to Mr. Davenant Carter.
Thus even the iron discipline of a British army is tempered to the sacred property holder.
The immediate advance of the army of Windy Standard upon the Black Sheds was only hindered by a somewhat serious indisposition which suddenly attacked the Commander-in-Chief. The facts were these.
Attached to the castle, but lying between it and the stepping-stones on the steep side of the hill, was an ancient enclosed orchard. It had doubtless been the original garden of the fortress, but the trees had gone back to their primitive "crabbiness" (as Hugh John put it), and in consequence the children were forbidden to eat any of the fruit—an order which might just as well not have been issued. But on a day it was reported to Janet Sheepshanks that Prissy and Hugh John were in the crab orchard. On tip-toe she stole down to catch them. She caught Hugh John. Prissy was up in one of the oldest and leafiest trees, and Hugh John, as in honour bound, persistently made signals in another direction to distract attention, as he was being hauled off to condign punishment.
He had an hour to wait in the study for his father, who was away at the county town. During this time Hugh John suffered strange qualms, not of apprehension, which presently issued in yet keener and more definitely located agony. At last Mr. Picton Smith entered.
"Well, sir, and what is this I hear?" he said severely, throwing down his riding-whip on the couch as if he meant to pick it up again soon.
Hugh John was silent. He saw that his father knew all there was to know about his evil doingsfrom Janet Sheepshanks, and he was far too wise to plead guilty.
"Did I not tell you not to go to the orchard?"
Hugh John hung his head, and made a slight grimace at the pattern on the carpet, as a severer pang than any that had gone before assailed him.
"Now, look here, sir," said his father, shaking his finger at him in a solemnising manner, "If ever I catch you again in that orchard, I'll—I'll give you as sound a thrashing, sir, as ever you got in your life."
Hugh John rubbed his hand across his body just above the second lowest button of his jacket.
"Oh, father," he said plaintively, "I wish dreadfully that you had caught me before the last time I was in the orchard."
The treatment with pills and rhubarb which followed considerably retarded the operations of the army of Windy Standard. It was not the first time that the stomach of a commander-in-chief has had an appreciable effect on the conduct of a campaign.
THE ARMY OF WINDY STANDARD.
ATlast, however, all was ready, in the historical phrase of Napoleon the Little, "to the last gaiter-button."
It was the intention of the Commander-in-Chief to attack the citadel of the enemy with banners flying, and after due notice. He had been practising for days upon his three-key bugle in order to give the call of Childe Roland. But Private Sammy Carter, who was always sticking his oar in, put him upon wiser lines, and (what is more) did it so quietly and suggestively that General Napoleon was soon convinced that Sammy's plan was his own, and onthe second day boasted of its merits to its original begetter, who did not even smile. The like has happened in greater armies with generals as distinguished.
Sammy Carter advised that the assault should be delivered between eight and nine in the morning, for the very good reasons that at that hour both the butcher's apprentice, Tommy Pratt, and the slaughterman would be busy delivering the forenoon orders, while the butcher's son, Nipper Donnan, would be at school, and the Black Sheds consequently entirely deserted.
At first Hugh John rebelled, and asserted that this was not a sportsmanlike mode of proceeding, but Sammy Carter, who always knew more about everything than was good for anybody, overwhelmed his chief with examples of strategies and surprises from the military history of thirty centuries.
"Besides," said he, somewhat pertinently, "let's get Donald back first, and then we can be chivalrous all you want. Perhaps they are keeping him to fatten him up for the Odd Coons' Bank Holiday Feast."
This, as the wily Sammy knew, was calculated to stir up the wrath of his general more than anything else he could say. For at the annual Bean Feast of the Honourable Company of Odd Coons, a benefit secret society of convivial habits, a sheep was annually roasted whole. It said an ox on the programme, but the actual result, curiously enough, was mutton and not beef.
"We attack to-morrow at daybreak," said Field-Marshal Smith grandly, as soon as Sammy Carter had finished speaking.
This, however, had subsequently to be modified to nine o'clock, to suit the breakfast hour of the Carters. Moreover Saturday was substituted for Tuesday, both because Cissy and Sammy could most easily "shirk" their governess on that day, and because Mr. Picton Smith was known to be going up to London by the night train on Friday.
On such trivial circumstances do great events depend.
When the army was finally mustered for the assault, its armament was found to be somewhat varied, though generally efficient. But then even in larger armies the weapons of the different arms of the service are far from uniform. There are, for example, rifles and bayonets for the Line, lances for the Light Horse, carbines, sabres, and army biscuits, all deadly after their kind.
So it was in the campaigning outfit of the forces of Windy Standard. The historian can only hint at this equipment, so strange were the various kits. The Commander-in-Chief wished to insist on a red sash and a long cut-and-thrust sword, with (if possible) a kettle-drum. But this was found impracticable as a general order. For not only did the two divisional commanders decline to submit to the sash, but there were not enough kettle-drums intact to go more than half round.
So General Smith was the only soldier who carried a real sword. He had also a pistol, which, however, obstinately refused to go off, but formed a valuable weapon when held by the barrel.Cissy was furnished with a pike, constructed by Prince Michael's father, the dethroned monarch of O'Donowitch-dom, out of a leister or fish-spear—which, strangely enough, he had carried away with him from his palace at the time of his exile. This constituted a really formidable armament, being at least five feet long, and so sharp that if you ran very hard against a soft wooden door with it, it made a mark which you could see quite a yard off in a good light.
Prissy had a carpet-broom with a long handle, which at a distance looked like a gun, and as Prissy meant to do all her fighting at a distance this was quite sufficient. In addition she had three pieces of twine to tie up her dress, so that she would be ready to run away untrammelled by flapping skirts. Sir Toady Lion was equipped for war with a thimble, three sticky bull's-eyes, the haft of a knife (but no blade), a dog-whistle, and a go-cart with one shaft, all of which proved exceedingly useful.
The two Generals of Division were attired in neat stable clothes with buttoned leggings, and put their trust in a pair of "catties" (otherwise known as catapults), two stout shillelahs, the national batons of the exiled prince, manufactured by himself; and, most valuable of all, a set a-piece of horny knuckles, which they had kept in constant practice against each other all through the piping times of peace. Both Mike and Peter knowingly chewed straws in opposite corners of their mouths.
The forces on the other side were quite unknown, both as to number and quality. HughJohn maintained that there were at least twenty, and Toady Lion stoutly proclaimed that there were a million thousand, and that he had seen and counted them every one. But a stricter census, instituted upon evidence led by Private Sammy Carter, could not get beyond half-a-dozen. So that the disproportion was not so great as might have been supposed. Still the siege of the Sheds was felt to be of the nature of a forlorn hope.
It was arranged that all who distinguished themselves for deeds of valour were to receive the Victoria Cross, a decoration which had been cut by Hugh John out of the tops of ginger-beer bottles with a cold chisel. As soon, however, as Sir Toady Lion heard this, he sat down in the dust of the roadside, and simply refused to budge till his grievances were redressed.
"I wants Victowya Cyossnow!" he remarked, with his father's wrinkle of determination between the eyes showing very plain, as it always did when he wanted anything very much.
For when Toady Lion asked for a thing, like the person in the advertisement, he saw that he got it.
In vain it was pointed out to him that this ill-advised action constituted rank mutiny, and that he was liable to be arrested, tried by court-martial, and ignominiously shot. Toady Lion knew all about mutiny, and cared nothing about courts-martial. Besides, he had had some experience, and he knew the value of "making oneself a nuisance" in army matters.
Equally in vain was Sammy Carter's humorouslyfalse information that he had better run, for here was Janet coming up the road with an awful biggy stick.
"Don't care for Janet," reiterated Toady Lion. "I wants Victowya Cyoss—I wants itnow!"
So there upon the roadside, at the very outset of the campaign, Sir Toady Lion was decorated with the much coveted "For Valour" cross.
And he would be a bold man who would say that he did not deserve it.