"Wellington Barracks, sir."
Denis fell into his natural smile.
"I don't know London very well. Will you do one more thing for me before I move on?"
"That I will, sir."
"Will you tell me how to find my way to Wellington Barracks?"
CHAPTER XXIX
GUY FAWKES DAY
A company officer was making his round of an outlying picket of Grenadiers; the black hour before a drizzling dawn effectually shrouded moist features and sodden whiskers, as bearskin and greatcoat served to modify an erect yet incorrigibly casual carriage. It was Ralph Devenish, however, and he was performing his duties with some punctilio. The sentries stood their twenty paces apart, all but invisible to each other, sundered links waiting for the dawn to complete the chain. And at each link the officer halted and beat his foot.
"All's well."
"Except your rifle, eh?" muttered Devenish to one or two; from a third he took the man's dripping piece, and from the nipple poured a tiny jet of water into the palm of his left hand. "Keep it covered if you can, or it will never go off," was his audible injunction to that sentry and the next. One who knew him would have marveled at such zeal and such initiative in Ralph Devenish.