“Heigh, sirs,” cried the harum-scarum boy. “Say ye sae! I’ll e’en tak a keek at the guard-room fire!” He sprang past the sentinel and was in the room in a moment.
The great fire flared tumultuously in the deep chimney-place; the white-washed room, despite its ample proportions, was warm, and snug, and clean. The light glittered on the arms stacked in the centre of the floor in readiness at a moment’s warning. On the broad hearth of stone flagging, the soldiers, all fully accoutred and arrayed, despite the hour, in their scarlet uniforms, were ranged; several sat on each of the high-backed settles on either side of the chimney. All looked up as the door opened and the drummer shot in, the sentinel protesting behind him. The door of the prison beyond was half ajar, the sergeant having stepped in to examine an inmate, confined for some military misdemeanor, who was complaining of sudden illness.
“Why, Robin,” one of the guard called out, jocosely. “Avaunt! Depart! This is no place for you!”
He was a big, clumsy, red-faced young Briton, and he rose and came with a lurching gait toward the drummer, who stood, smiling, a mischievous glint in his blue eyes, his cocked hat set back on his flaxen curls, his face flushed with the nipping chill without, and his red coat and leggings covered with a frosting of snow, evidently relishing the freak of his intrusion here in the absence of the officers, and full of animal spirits and fun.
“Wha’s gaun to mak me gae, the noo?” he demanded, capering on his long legs.
“Faix, thin, I will, me b’ye!” cried an Irishman, springing up from the hearth, eager for even the semblance of a shindy. As he ran at the drummer, head down, Robin lifted the drum-sticks and beat a brisk rub-a-dub on his crown; then as his English comrade came to the rescue, the boy whisked about and, being the taller by a head, despite his youth, he made the drum-sticks rattle about the older man’s ears and his skull ring like the drawn membrane of the new snare drum. The others sprang up in a body and rushed gayly at the light and agile drummer, still plying his sticks on every cranium that came within his reach, whisking among them, darting from one to another, slipping under their out-stretched arms and setting many a head to ringing with a tune all its own, till finally he was surrounded, collared, caught up bodily and fairly flung outside in the deepest drift near at hand. There he wallowed futilely struggling, for a moment overcome with laughter and frantic exertion; finally, he found his feet and made off, tingling with warmth and jollity, toward the barracks. He was fairly housed there when the guard-house door opened to admit the officer of the guard, the corporal, and the two men with the lantern, and the opposite door closed by the re-entrance of the sergeant from the sick patient. Both officers stood at gaze; the men were shambling and shuffling, a trifle shame-facedly, about the room, deeply flushed, some still mechanically laughing, and breathing hard and fast, though all assumed the stiff regulation attitude of the soldier.
“What is all this, Sergeant?” demanded Raymond.
“I don’t know, sir,” answered the second in command. “I’ve been looking after Peters—he seems better now.”
“What is the matter, men?” Raymond turned to the soldiers.
“Just a bit of fun, sir,” one of them responded, puffingly, his breath still short.