Perhaps Flora Warrender may come with him as his bride was the next idea; and it added greatly to the bitterness of the others.
That night Quentin slept but little, and he seemed barely to have closed his eyes when he heard the drum beating the assembly.
Then he sprang from bed just as the grey dawn was breaking, and proceeded hastily to dress, remembering to have heard last evening that, at daybreak, the regiment was to have a "punishment parade," which, to his uninitiated ears, had a very unpleasant sound.
CHAPTER III.
THE PUNISHMENT PARADE.
"Most worthy sergeant, I have seen thee lead,
Where men among us would be slow to follow;
Udsdaggers, yes! By trench and culverine,
Where men and horses too, lay foully heap'd
On other; and hath it come to this, good sergeant,
Beshrew my heart—a prisoner and afeared."
Old Play.
Plain though it was, being destitute of lace or epaulettes, poor Quentin was very proud of his volunteer uniform, and being eminently a handsome young man, he looked very well in it. The coarse buff crossbelts, the pouch, and bayonet, and, more especially, the Brown Bess he had to carry, did not suit his taste quite so well. He had imagined that he would have to shoulder a kind of Joe Manton, or something like a smart Enfield rifle of the present day, with a "draw" of ten pounds or less on the trigger, instead of a long blunderbuss like the regulation musket of those days, weighing fourteen pounds, with its enormous butt-plate of brass and so forth.
Thanks to the teaching of the old quartermaster, he proved himself so apt a pupil under the sergeant-major and old Norman Calder, that within a week he was reported as "fit for duty," as Monkton said, "doing as much credit to his preceptors as to the cabbage-stalk," for so he designated the army tailor.
But we are anticipating.
His first parade was an inauspicious one, in so far as it was for punishment.