"Morbleu! Time has fled nimbly this night. I forgot everything in your recital, mon ami. Thanks for your amiable complaisance; and now I retire to follow you in dreams. Bon soir."
With a silent chuckle, he stepped from St. Udo's tent and disappeared to seek his own quarters.
Thoms, too, clasped up his tiny note-book, and creeping round the side of the tent, and observing that St. Udo sat absorbed in dark reverie, he wrapped himself in his blanket, and threw himself at St. Udo's feet, and soon fell asleep.
Then the night grew black and late, and silence brooded solemnly above the camp, broken only by the faint moan of the sleepless wanderer, or the picket's hollow tramp.
Twice the devoted preserver of St. Udo's life softly raised his head to look at Colonel Brand, and sank down again, and still the lonely man sat gazing into the lurid embers of the waning watch-fire, thinking his thoughts of gall.
Just before dawn he thought he heard a movement in the camp, a faint, uncertain tripping of a wary foot, a sly whistle, twice repeated.
Through the murky gloom St. Udo peered with languid interest at a spot of fire gently undulating toward his tent.
What could it be? A cannoneer's slow match! But what could bring a battery there—and at that hour?
Unwilling to alarm needlessly his slumbering command, he slid back from the glare of the camp-fire into the shadow of his tent, and rising, bent his steps to the neighborhood of the suspicious object.
A passing breeze, laden with the perfume of the familiar cigar, a brighter glow, revealing the drooping nose and pursed-up lips, declared the identity of the prowler.