“All right! I won’t say anything before her; but this young chap has set me thinking; he seemed so strange.”
Other people thought Fred Denville strange, notably Major Rockley, who, in company with Sir Matthew Bray and Sir Harry Payne, was on the Parade, as, with brows knit and eyes bent down, the dragoon came along, walking swiftly.
The three officers were in undress uniform, having just left parade, and each carried his riding-whip.
Fred did not notice them, he was too deep in thought, and walking straight on he went right between them, unintentionally giving Sir Matthew Bray a rough thrust with his shoulder, for of course an officer could not give way to a private.
It was Fred Denville’s duty, in the character of James Bell, private dragoon, to have saluted his officers and given them all the path, if necessary; but at that moment he could see nothing but the grey white-faced old man in the cell at the gaol, in peril of his life and threatened with a felon’s death.
“I must have been drunk,” he was muttering to himself. “Yes: I remember, I was horribly drunk that night, and didn’t know what I was doing. Poor old father! with all your faults you did not deserve this. Yes: I must have been drunk.”
At this point he was brought from his musings to the present by a stinging cut from a riding-whip across the back, his tight uniform being so little protection that the sharp whalebone seemed to divide the flesh.
With a cry of rage he turned round, and flung out his fist, striking Sir Harry Payne, who had given the blow with the whip, full on the nose, and sending him backwards.
“You insolent dog!”
“You scoundrel!”