Then once more about what delight his mother would feel if the colonel’s ideas came to pass, and Sir Robert came back in triumph.
“Oh, it’s too good to be true,” thought the boy; but he clung to the hope all the same.
The only time when he was relieved from the pressure of his sad thoughts was when the conversation around grew animated respecting the probabilities of the country being devastated by civil war; but even then it made his heart ache on Andrew Forbes’s account, as he heard the quiet contempt with which the elder officers treated the Pretender’s prospects, the colonel especially speaking strongly on the subject.
“No,” he said, “England will never rise in favour of such a monarch as that. It is a mad business, that will never win support. The poor fellow had better settle down quietly to his life in France. The reign of the Stuarts is quite at an end.”
“Poor old Drew,” thought Frank. “I wish he could have heard that; but he would not have believed if he had.”
Then the officers went on talking of the possibility of their regiment being called upon for active service, and the boy could not help a feeling of wonder at the eager hopes they expressed of having to take part in that which would probably result in several of those present losing their lives or being badly wounded.
“I wonder whether I shall be as careless about my life when I am grown-up and a soldier?” he thought.
The regular dinner had long been over, and the members of the mess had been sitting longer than usual, the probability of the regiment going into active service having supplied them with so much food for discussion that the hour was getting late, and the young guest had several times over felt an intense longing to ask permission to leave the table, his intention being to get Captain Murray to let him join Andrew Forbes. But he felt that as a guest he could not do this, and must wait till the colonel rose.
He was thinking all this impatiently for the last time, feeling wearied out after so terribly exciting a day as he had passed through, when the colonel and all present suddenly sprang to their feet; for a shot rang out from close at hand, followed by a loud, warning cry, as if from a sentry; then, before any one could reach the door to run out and see what was wrong, there was another shot, and again another, followed by a faint and distant cry.