While love had his innings in the sick-room, below curiosity led the feet of Mr. Cuddlehead toward the officers' quarters on the outskirts of the town. The night was fine, and not oppressively close. A breeze from the hills made liquid stir in the higher foliage. Cuddlehead felt in his blood a hint of something unusual, as he took his way through the President's wide gardens, and out to the road. No sentinel paced, sabre at shoulder, before the little guard-house. The troopers stood in groups along the street, smoking and talking. The smoke of their pungent cigarettes drifted on the air, and the murmur of their voices rang with a low note of menace. Unmolested, Cuddlehead reached the long white building where the officers of this inconsiderable army lodged and messed. Through the open windows glowed a subdued light from the shaded lamps above the table. The compassing verandas were but partially illuminated by the glow from within, and silent men stood here and there in the shadows, motionless and expectant. At Cuddlehead's approach, the nearer ones hesitated for a moment, and then drew away. "There is something rotten," quoted Cuddlehead, under his breath, and looked cautiously in. For a moment the array of faultless, gaudy mess-jackets startled him. In the sight of an apparently civilized military mess there was, to him, a suggestion of danger. Recovering his composure, he looked again. The faces up and down the table were dark, and, for the most part, sullen. At the head of the board, with his face toward the onlooker's place of vantage, sat Hemming. His shoulders were squared. His eye-glass gleamed in the lamplight. Cuddlehead stared at the commander-in-chief with a fearful, spellbound gaze. His hands clutched at the low window-sill. His breath seemed to hang in his windpipe. At last he straightened himself, moistened his craven lips with his tongue, and went stealthily away. Safe in his own room in the quiet inn, he took a shrewd nip of raw brandy. "What the devil," he asked himself, "brought that righteous, immaculate fool to this God-forsaken place?" Two things were uppermost in his memory--a caning once given to a cad, and a shilling once tossed to a beggar. CHAPTER X. THE FIRST SHOT