A faint light shone out from the open door upon the military figure on duty, and Roy recognised in him one of the men from the mill, completely transformed from the heavy plodding fellow who had come in to take service.
But the challenge had brought out the old sergeant, also in a cloak, although it was a hot night, and within it he swung a lighted lantern.
The drawbridge was up and the portcullis down, making the entrance look black and strange, and shutting off the outer gate, from which the day guard was withdrawn, though this had not been accomplished without trouble and persuasion, for old Jenkin had protested.
“Like giving up the whole castle to the enemy, Master Roy,” he said, with a full sense of the importance of his little square tower, and quite ignoring the fact that in the event of trouble he would be entirely cut off from his fellows if the drawbridge was raised.
But the old man gave in.
“Sodger’s dooty is to ’bey orders,” he said; and with the full understanding that he was to go back to his gate in the morning, he came into the guard-room to sleep on a bench every night.
“How is old Jenk?” said Roy.
“Fast asleep in his reg’lar place,” replied Ben, and he led the way back into the gloomy stone guard-room, where he held up the lantern over the venerable old fellow’s face, and Roy looked at him thoughtfully.
“Seems hard to understand it, Master Roy, don’t it?” said Ben; “but if we lives, you and me’ll grow to be as old as that. I expect to find some morning as he’s gone off too fast ever to wake up again.”
“Poor old fellow!” said Roy, laying his gloved band gently on the grey head. “How fond he always was of getting me to his room when I could only just toddle, and taking me to the moat to throw bread to the carp.”