But instead of making poor Tommy a prisoner with the quarter-guard, he had shouldered his musket and kept the post in person, watching over the sleeping soldier on the one hand and the hill-camp on the other, till the movement of armed tribesmen in front compelled him to fire and bring the picket under arms.
He saw less of his chief friend Leslie Fotheringhame than he might otherwise have done, for the time of the latter—despite anxiety for the affair of his friend—was much occupied by Annabelle Erroll, and in dangling after her.
At last there came a day which Cecil never forgot, from the emotions of mortification and humiliation it occasioned him, It was a Thursday—the usual 'march-out' day for the regiment. From his window he watched its departure, with bayonets fixed and colours flying, in heavy marching order, and in all the pride and bravery of the service, while he remained behind a prisoner, disgraced, deprived of his sword and sash, with a terrible ordeal before him, and too probably a doom—to him—worse than death!
And he heard the drums grow fainter and fainter, till their last notes died away in the distance, and he heard only the beating of his heart, that followed them with painful yearning it had never known before.
Anon, when the regiment returned, Freeport told him that when passing the house of Sir Piers Montgomerie, it had been halted in column, when the fine old soldier came out on the balcony and was received with a general salute, which he beheld with swelling heart and glistening eyes, and then he attempted to make a speech, but his voice failed him—yet he made a short one—so short as only to be equalled by that of the Duke of Wellington to the Household Brigade, when, after keeping silence for some time, he said, 'Guards! you know me, and I know you—stand at ease!'
'Was—was Miss Montgomerie on the balcony?' asked Cecil, after a pause.
'No; there was only old Mrs. Garth waving her handkerchief vigorously, and alternately mopping her eyes with it, poor old soul, as she thought, I have no doubt, of old John Garth of our Grenadiers. I thought it strange that the belle of our unlucky ball was not there.'
But Mary had been watching the regiment, sorrowfully, from her own room, and missing an absent face sorely indeed.
To her this was a time of great horror and dismay; each night that she laid her sweet face on the pillow, she thought:
'If I could only waken in the morning to find it all a dream—all a dream!'