Till the morning gun boomed from Gun Hill, and the sweet low reveille began to steal out on the moistened air, he continued to wander thus, till, drenched with the dews of night, he retired to his hut, and flinging himself upon his bed, endeavoured to sleep for an hour or two--the sleep of utter exhaustion. From this happy state he was soon roused by an uproarious rattling at the door of his room, and his subaltern, Frank Fleming, in undress uniform--a heedless, noisy young fellow, and a second edition of Jerry Wilmot, but neither revised nor corrected--came bustling in, shouting, 'The black ball is hoisted _alone_ at headquarters. Thank God!' 'What do you mean?' asked Goring, in a weak voice, but angrily. 'Mean, man alive! don't you know? It means that the parade is cancelled.' 'I had forgotten, but, till I dismiss the piquet, parades are nothing to me,' said Goring, turning his face to the wall, and Fleming departed, fully believing from the manner and appearance of his senior officer that 'he was screwed tight as a drum, by Jove!--on duty, too! I wonder the fellow doesn't cut Aldershot now--he's rich enough; can draw cheques galore; not get them, like me, with strong paternal comments, and perhaps well-deserved objurgations.' And Bevil Goring lay there in his hut, hearing the incessant drums beating and bugles sounding with a dazed feeling, as if he had been shot into another world. With him it was-- 'Oh, love for a year, a month, a day, But alas for the love that loves alway!' 'What the devil is up with Goring?' said Fleming and others of the dépôt; 'within the last few days he has looked older by ten years--worn and worried--not at all like a man who has just come into a fine pot of money.' CHAPTER XIII. THE JOURNEY. At last he got his leave of absence and was off for London. Food remained before him almost untasted or forgotten. He ate eventually, but very sparingly, like one who knows it should be partaken of only for strength to achieve some task that was to come. 'We no longer travel,' wrote Thackeray, with reference to some of the improvements of the age; 'we are carried from place to place,' and Goring was sensible of what another writer calls 'the tedious hurry of locomotion,' as he was swept on his way to Harwich by the 7 p.m. train from the great bustling and brilliantly lighted station at Liverpool Street. There are few among us who have not undergone at some period of our lives that intolerable fever of spirit, when setting out on some journey or errand, the eventuality of which may be the life or death of some one loved well and dearly. The heart and soul annihilating space, traverse the journey in an instant; the helpless longing body, no matter at how swift a rate it may be progressing, seems to stand stock-still, and the imposed inaction becomes a physical torture that is to a certain extent merciful, since for the time it partially paralyses the action of the brain.