"Well, my advice is Punch's: Don't. Hello! here's Dryden. Thought you were on court duty up at head-quarters to-day, old man. Come in and have a wet?" Mr. Ferry had seen some happy days at Fortress Monroe when the ships of Her Majesty's navy lay off the Hygeia and the gallants of England lay to at the bar, and Ferry rejoiced in the vernacular of the United Service, so far as he could learn it, as practised abroad.
"Thanks. Just had one over at Merton's. Hear you've been having review and all that sort of thing down here," said the infantryman, as he lolled back in an easy-chair and planted his boot-heels on the gallery rail. "Glad I got out of it. Court met and adjourned at ten, so I came home. How'd Waring get off?"
"Huh!—Cram's wagon," laughed Ferry, rather uncomfortably, however.
"Oh, Lord, yes, I know that. Didn't I see him driving Madame Lascelles up Rampart Street as I came down in the mule-car?"
And then Pierce and Ferry looked at each other, startled.
That evening, therefore, it was a comfort to both when Sam came tooling the stylish turnout through the sally-port and his battery chums caught sight of the Allertons. Pierce was just returning from stables, and Ferry was smoking a pipe of perique on the broad gallery, and both hastened to don their best jackets and doff their best caps to these interesting and interested callers. Cram himself had gone off for a ride and a think. He always declared his ideas were clearer after a gallop. The band played charmingly. The ladies came out and made a picturesque croquet-party on the green carpet of the parade. The officers clustered about and offered laughing wagers on the game. A dozen romping children were playing joyously around the tall flag-staff. The air was rich with the fragrance of the magnolia and Cape jasmine, and glad with music and soft and merry voices. Then the stirring bugles rang out their lively summons to the batterymen beyond the wall. The drums of the infantry rolled and rattled their echoing clamor. The guard sprang into ranks, and their muskets, glistening in the slanting beams of the setting sun, clashed in simultaneous "present" to the red-sashed officer of the day, and that official raised his plumed hat to the lieutenant with the lovely girl by his side and the smiling elders on the back seat as the team once more made the circuit of the post on the back trip to town, and Miss Flora Allerton clasped her hands and looked enthusiastically up into her escort's face.
"Oh," she cried, "isn't it all just too lovely for anything! Why, I think your life here must be like a dream."
But Miss Allerton, as Mrs. Cram had said, sometimes gushed, and life at Jackson Barracks was no such dream as it appeared.
The sun went down red and angry far across the tawny flood of the rushing river. The night lights were set at the distant bend below. The stars came peeping through a shifting filmy veil. The big trees on the levee and about the flanking towers began to whisper and complain and creak, and the rising wind sent long wisps of straggly cloud racing across the sky. The moon rose pallid and wan, hung for a while over the dense black mass of moss-grown cypress in the eastward swamp, then hid her face behind a heavy bank of clouds, as though reluctant to look upon the wrath to come, for a storm was rising fast and furious to break upon and deluge old Jackson Barracks.