"What’s this?" said Jack, sniffing. "Roast hare, by all that’s glorious! Giles, you’re a wonder." "’Twas Pepito, sir," said Giles. "The young varmint went out before ’twas light this morning and snared the beast for your breakfast, sir. I allow he makes himself useful sometimes." Pepito was grinning with pleasure, and Jack without ado devoted himself to his meal. "By the way," he said presently, "have you seen anything of those two fellows I left with the wagon?" A broad smile broke over Giles’s ruddy face. "They was brought in yesterday, sir, under guard, and locked up in the guard-room. They was mad, sir, both on ’em, but Corporal Wilkes the worst. He made a few remarks, sir—" and here Giles gave vent to his loud guffaw, and instantly straightened his face to its usual stolid impassivity. "Are they still locked up?" asked Jack. "No, sir. Captain Stovin ordered ’em to be released when they’d had about two hours of it." "Go and fetch them." In ten minutes Corporal Wilkes entered, followed by Bates, each man wearing a look of sullen discontent. "Now, Wilkes, what have you got to say for yourself?" said Jack sternly. "Say, sir? I ain’t got nothing to say, nor I didn’t get a chance o’ saying nothing. It ain’t common fairness, let alone justice, that it ain’t, begging your pardon, sir. It ain’t for the likes o’ me to question what an orficer says, sir, to say nothing of an orficer like Bobby—beg pardon, like General Craufurd. But," continued the corporal, his eloquence increasing with his indignation, "but, Mr. Lumsden, sir, what I want to know is, what call the general ’ad to miscall me a straggler, to say nothing o’ Bates, and send us in under guard of a bloomin’ corp’ril of the second battalion—why, we’re the laughing-stock o’ the regiment." "There now," said Jack with due gravity, suspecting what must have occurred, "I suppose there was some little mistake. Tell me all about it." Wilkes proceeded to explain that a few minutes after Jack left with the broken wheel a heavy shower of sleet had come on, and he and Bates had taken shelter beneath the wagon. From this point of vantage they had seen the passage of the greater part of the second battalion, which was whipping in all stragglers from the various other regiments that had gone by earlier in the day. In the rear of the battalion rode General Craufurd with Colonel Wade and other officers, and Craufurd’s eagle eye had at once remarked the abandoned wagon. Riding up to it, he descried the two figures crouching underneath, and sternly demanded what they were doing there.