"Ay; you see my old one was faded; things bleach soon in this country——"
"And a new hat, I declare!"
"The old one was too vexatious shabby. Then you have no message?"
"No; Sherry conveys my regards. You'll have his company back; I suppose you will be rather late, and 'twill be no bad thing to have a companion; there have been one or two robberies by night on the Helmund road."
Until the evening Harry was fully occupied. The regimental riding-master had begged his assistance in training a number of recruits, and, since example is better than precept, he had been for several hours on horseback, showing the Dutch youths the manage of their steeds. When this was finished he had a turn at the foils with the quarter-master, who had taken a fancy to him, and was wont to declare him one of the best swordsmen in the army. After his evening meal he felt he should like to stretch his legs, and, guessing that Fanshawe and Sherebiah would soon be on the way home, decided to walk out and meet them. It was a fine still evening, the road was dry, and a spin of a couple of miles, as far as a big chestnut-tree that marked the limit of the Sunday promenaders, would pleasantly end the day.
The sun was going down as he left the walls of Breda behind him, throwing a long shadow on the road. He did not hurry his pace, but ambled easily along, musing as a walker will, and paying little heed to things around him. His thoughts were bright and clear, for he was in the pink of physical health, and he felt that Providence was very good to him. It was just a year ago that his father had died, and all the prospect looked black. How strangely things had turned out! The very event that had seemed to fling a pall over his life had really proved the entrance to the career nearest to his heart. He was already impatient for the winter to be over; surely with the next spring the war would be prosecuted more vigorously, and the Dutch authorities would not hang like a drag upon the wheels of Marlborough's plans! He was ambitious, as every young officer must be, to distinguish himself; and in his ambition there was a spice of amour propre; he felt that he should dearly like to prove to the great duke himself that he would have done no discredit to his sponsor if his commission had been an English one. But a Dutch cornet, he thought, would have little chance of coming under Marlborough's personal notice; and, after all, what did it matter? Duty was duty, wherever and for whomsoever it was done.
Thus weaving a chain of imaginings, he came to the big solitary tree before he was aware of it. He halted; Fanshawe and Sherebiah were not in sight; the dusk was thickening, and he did not care to walk farther; yet, having come so far, he was loth to go back without them. Surely they could not be long now! Opposite the tree there was a gate into a field. He climbed on to that, and sat with his feet tucked below one of its bars, intending to wait their arrival. From his higher position he now descried two figures in the distance; in another moment he saw that they were horsemen. "Here they are at last!" he thought.
A whimsical idea flashed into his head. They would not expect to see him; he felt sportive, the boyish instinct for fun asserting itself. What if he could surprise the two—dart out on them unawares and make them jump? The tree opposite overhung the road for several yards, its foliage was still fairly thick, for the season had been mild; the autumn frosts and gales had not yet begun; and it would provide ample shelter. He sprang off the gate, ran across the road, leapt the ditch at the side, scaled the trunk with an agility bred of long practice in Wiltshire, and was soon hidden among the leaves, some fourteen feet above the road. He filled his pocket with burrs he found still clinging to the branches, laughing inwardly as he pictured Fanshawe's consternation when he should receive one of those prickly missiles on his head.
Soon he heard the measured beat of the approaching horses. Peering between the leaves, he was disappointed to notice that the riders were not Fanshawe and Sherebiah after all. One of them, a bulky man, had a familiar appearance, the other was masked; but in the first Harry recognized Captain Aglionby, and the second in figure and bearing unmistakably recalled Monsieur de Polignac. Harry wondered what was the meaning of the mask; knowing his men, he had little doubt that some villainy was afoot. His wonder gave way to uneasiness when he found that, instead of passing the tree, they dismounted and stood exactly beneath him. They opened the gate on which he had been seated a few minutes before, and led their horses through into the field, along the stone dike at the edge, and at some distance from the gate, as Harry could just see in the gathering darkness, secured them to the wall, after some difficulty in finding anything to hitch them to. Then they returned to the road, talking in low tones, and looking expectantly up and down.
"'Sdeath!" muttered Aglionby, "what has become of them?"