“Now do you wonder we are the colour of coffee?” demanded Richard suddenly.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you were as black as a coal! And no wonder y’are thin, poor creatures, if sand is all you’ve had to eat!”
“Well, not all,” admitted Brian. “But we calculate that each man’s teeth have been ground down a quarter of an inch by the sand he’s chewed with his food—more or less according to his appetite. And never, never will we get the last of the sand out of our hair till we’re all bald! D’ye wonder then the General had no difficulty in getting complaints when he went round hunting for ’em as usual? But he turned the men round his little finger easily, and they went back to duty as meek as lambs when he had fired ’em off one of his heroic orations, full of Assaye and Corunna.”
“Well, but now, what will have been the good of it all?” cried Eveleen. “You have destroyed a place that was not doing anybody any harm, and the people that were doing the harm have all escaped.”
“Don’t say that to Bayard, I beg of you!” said Richard quickly. “To his mind the one good point of a bad business is that no lives have been sacrificed.”
“Did I hear my name mentioned?” said Colonel Bayard’s voice, and he came round the corner of the tent, throwing away the end of his cheroot as he did so. “May I intrude, Mrs Ambrose? Richard, you and I must have an explanation; there has been no opportunity hitherto. You shall do us the honour to judge between us, ma’am.”
Brian rose hastily. “I think, Colonel, you will speak more freely without me,” he said with some formality. “Any criticism of Sir Henry Lennox offered in my hearing ’twould be at once my duty and my pleasure to resent. So I’ll leave you,” and he departed.
CHAPTER XIII.
A LAST EFFORT.
Colonel Bayard looked after Brian with a sigh. “Your brother is highly conscientious, ma’am, but I hope I know better than to use improper language about his chief in his presence. Nor have I anything worse to say of the General than that I believe from my soul he had no evil intention in putting me in my present disagreeable position.”
“Ah, believe me, his one thought was to atone to you for any slight Lord Maryport might have seemed to offer,” said Eveleen earnestly. He sighed again, impatiently.