While Bert Gordon paced his beat on this particular afternoon, he kept one eye directed toward the bushes on the opposite side of the creek, and the other turned toward the camp. The huge tent that had been erected the day before for the accommodation of visitors, was already pretty well filled; and from his lofty perch on the embankment Bert could see his school-fellows strolling about[about] in company with their parents, or with their brothers and sisters, who had come hundreds of miles to see the students in their summer quarters. Every now and then one of the village hacks would drive in at the south gate and deposit a load of ladies and gentlemen before the door of the superintendent’s marquee. Every train that steamed up to the station brought a fresh influx of visitors, and finally the camp began to present quite a holiday appearance.
“Don’t I wish that my father and mother were among them!” thought Bert, who began to feel lonely when he saw that almost every boy who was off duty had hastened to the tent to receive some relative or friend who had come there to see him. “If they didn’t live so far away they would certainly be here; but, as it is——”
Bert suddenly stopped, and shading his eyes with his hand, looked intently at something on the other side of the creek. He was certain that the bushes toward which he directed his gaze, were suddenly and violently agitated, as if some heavy body were working its way through them. A moment later something that looked like a head crowned with feathers was thrust cautiously into view; then a dark brown face appeared and a pair of glittering eyes looked straight at him.
“What in the world is that?” muttered Bert, after he had winked hard and looked again to make sure that he had not been deceived. “It can’t be a head, and yet—it is a head and nothing else. Corporal of the guard No. 4!”
The head, or whatever it was, bobbed down out of sight in an instant, and presently the corporal came hurrying up.
“There’s something or other over there in the bushes,” began Bert, in response to the non-commissioned officer’s inquiries.
“And it looked like a head with feathers on it, I suppose,” interrupted the corporal, with some impatience in his tones. “I don’t see what is the matter with everybody this afternoon. You are the third one who has called me out for nothing.”
“But I didn’t call you out for nothing,” protested Bert. “My eyes never went back on me yet, and I know that there is somebody over there in the bushes.”
“I don’t dispute that. It is probably your brother or Egan who is watching for a chance to creep by some of you sentries.”
“But they wouldn’t have feathers on their heads, would they?” demanded Bert.