Richard walked on, thinking of what he was not long before, and of his present position through one turn of fortune’s wheel. What was to happen next, now that he had been disappointed and his project had come to naught?
Right on before him there was another gateway, across which, in the soft summer evening light, a second sentry in white flannel jacket passed, with the light gleaming upon his triangular bayonet.
One moment he thought of turning back; the next he had rejected this, and advanced. He had taken his course, and he must go on.
The second sentry looked harder at him as he passed an open doorway from out of which came a puff of hot bad tobacco smoke; but the man seemed to pay no further heed as he went on and now found himself at what was evidently the front of the barracks, and directly afterward a burst of music fell upon his ears.
It sounded very welcome, and, walking in the direction, he passed a couple of large open windows, from whence came the clatter of silver upon china and the buzz of voices accompanied by sundry odours of an agreeable nature, which reminded him of the fact that he had eaten nothing since his hurried breakfast.
“The mess-room,” he said to himself.
The officers were dining; and the band was playing selections during that function.
Richard passed on, thinking, and with his spirits going down like the mercury in a weather-glass before a storm.
In a short time he, in all probability, would have been an officer attached to some regiment, while now he was a fugitive and a vagabond on the face of the earth.
“Not even fit to be a private,” he said to himself; and then, attracted by the music, he turned and walked back, to stop between the two windows, listening, and with the smell of the dinner making him forget his troubles in baser thoughts as his mouth began to water.