“Yes, that’s it. Keep cool, and you’ll soon come right. Feel faint now?”
“No, the giddiness has gone off.”
“That’s right.”
The bandsman ceased speaking, for he had to take his part again, as the rear of the new regiment marched past with the mounted officers. Then followed an ambulance waggon, the water-tub, two or three baggage waggons, and half a dozen men who had fallen out on the march, all of whom Dick saw as if it were part of a dream, which lasted, in a confused way, as he and his companion joined their own regiment, took their place at the head, and returned to their own quarters.
“Getting all right, again?” said the clarionet-player, as they stood together in the barrack yard waiting to be dismissed.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” asked Wilkins, sourly.
“Smithson sick, sir,” was the reply.
The bandmaster looked at his principal flute curiously, but said nothing.
The next minute they were dismissed, and Dick longed in vain for a place where he could be alone, the only approach to it being the open window, where, after the customary change of uniform and wash and clean, he sat gazing out at the sky, but seeing no bright silvery clouds—nothing but the face of that young officer and the old ruins down by the flooded river; for it seemed to Dick Smithson that—in spite of what had been written about midnight and the witching hour—he had seen a ghost, and in the broad daylight, too.
He tried to cast the idea from him again and again, but that face would return, wonderful in its resemblance, and at last a painful, feverish fit came on; for the countenance he had that day gazed upon, and which had impressed him so painfully, brought up all the old life which he had tried so hard and successfully to forget.