“S’pose so. The Colonel’s going to let a lot of ’em come in and help do duty in the place—isn’t he?”
“Ho, yus! Certainly. Of course! and hope you may get it. When old Graves has any of these white-cotton-gowny-diers doing sentry-go in Ghittah, just you come and tell me. Wake me up, you know, for I shall have been asleep for about twenty years.”
“He will. You see if he don’t.”
“Yah! Never-come-never,” cried Gedge. “Can’t yer see it’s all a dodge to get in the fort. They can’t do it fair fighting, so they’re beginning to scheme. Let ’em in? Ho, yus! Didn’t you see the Colonel put his tongue in his cheek and say, ‘Likely’?”
“No,” said one of Gedge’s companions, “nor you neither.”
“Can’t say I did see; but he must have done.”
The officers had softly drawn up their legs and moved away so as not to play eavesdropper, but they could not help hearing the men’s conversation thus far; and as soon as they had climbed out of earshot so as to get on a level with the top of the fall, where they meant to try and cross the stream, descend on the other side, and work their way back, after recrossing it at its exit into the river, Bracy took up the conversation again.
“There,” he said to Drummond, “you heard that?”
“Oh yes, I heard: but what do these fellows know about it?”
“They think,” said Bracy, “and—I say,” he whispered; “look!”