"'Likely enough; but under what head? Discipline?'
"'No. Tyrant! See how that is defined!'
"The sergeant-major did look, and saw that Colonel James therein defines, 'Petty tyrants—a low, grovelling set of beings, who, without one spark of real courage within themselves, execute the orders of usurped or strained authority with brutal rigour;' and as he read on Pivett grew pale with rage.
"At the first halt of the brigade, a general court-martial, of which I was the junior member, sat, by order of General R——. An example was wanted; so Ernslie was reduced to the ranks.
"Our parade next morning was a gloomy one, as we formed a hollow square of close columns of regiments, near the ruins of a great Hindoo temple. The sun was yet below the horizon, and in the dim, cold light, the face of Ernslie looked pale and ghastly as he was marched into the square, a prisoner, between two armed troopers, one of whom, with execrable taste, the sergeant-major had contrived should be his own son, Philip.
"The sergeant was nervous in bearing and restless in eye; but his mind seemed to be turned inward. He was thinking, perhaps, of the terrors of the day at Balaclava, of the dead wife he had committed to the deep, or of the boy who stood scheming revenge by his side; but it was not until he felt the penknife of the trumpet-major ripping the worthily-won chevrons from his sleeve that a groan escaped his lips, a flush crossed his haggard face, and his soul seemed to die within him.
"Then he slunk to the rear of his troop, a broken and degraded man. Philip's dark eyes were full of fire, and, if a glance could have slain, the career of Matthew Pivett had ended there.
"We all felt for the sergeant, and knew that in the vindication of discipline he had been made a victim; but that night the Queen lost a good soldier, for Ernslie was absent from roll-call—he had disappeared without a trace, and the sergeant-major openly declared his belief that he had deserted to the rebel Sepoys, under Hossein Ali.
"The truth was, though we knew it not at the time, that Ernslie, when wandering alone and unarmed near our camp, communing with himself in a storm of grief and misery, had actually been waylaid and carried off by some of Hossein's scouting Sepoys, who by that time were tired of slaughtering and torturing the white Feringhees. They spared him, and discovering somehow that he had once been a golandazee, or gunner, they chained him naked to a field-piece, and kept him to assist in working their cannon against us in Kotah, the place which we were on the march to besiege and storm.
"So poor Anthony Ernslie's name was further disgraced by being scored down as a deserter in the regimental books.