"The countersign," he repeated.
"Pooh, pooh!" said I, "I do not know anything about the countersign. I am Mr. Shyster, who came up this morning, when you and the General were doing light-artillery practice on the lawn. Please let me go to my room."
But the brute stood immovable. As I advanced, I heard him cock his musket.
"Good God!" thought I, "this is no joke, after all. This stupid stable-man may have loaded his musket. What if it should go off? If I retreat, I must camp out,—no joke at this season;—rheumatism and a loss of salary, to say the least. This will never do."
And I screamed,—
"General! General Van Bummel!"
"Silence! or I'll march you to the guard-house," thundered the sentinel.
Luckily the General lay, like Irene, "with casement open to the skies." He heard the noise. I recognized his martial tones. I hurriedly explained my situation. He gave me the word; it was Eugene; countersign, Marlborough. This satisfied the Coach-Cerberus, and I passed into bed without further mishap.
The first sound I heard the next morning was the rat-tat-too of a drum. "There goes that d——d coachman again," I said to myself, and turned over for another nap; but a shrill bugle-call brought me to my seat.
Running to the window, I saw two men on horseback in dragoon equipments. The horses were the artillery-nags of yesterday; the riders, the General and his man-at-all-arms. Hurrying on my clothes, I got out of doors in time to see them go at a gallop across the lawn, leap a low hedge at the end of the grass-plot, and disappear in the orchard. Thither I followed fast to see the sport. They reached the boundary-line of the Van-Bummel estate, wheeled, and turned back on a trot. When the General espied me, he waved his sabre and shouted, "Charge!" They galloped straight at me. I had barely time to dodge behind an apple-tree, when they passed like a whirlwind over the spot I had been standing on, and covered me with dirt from the heels of their horses. I walked back to the house, very much annoyed, as men are apt to be, when they think they have compromised their dignity a little by dodging to escape danger from another's mischief or folly. At breakfast, accordingly, I remonstrated with the chief; but he only laughed, and asked me why I did not form a hollow square and let the front rank kneel and fire.