“I am not,” cried Raffles, and his tone was new to me. I have seldom heard one more indignant. “Yes,” he continued, “this is loot, and the wrong ’un will out. That’s what you’re thinking, Peter—I beg your pardon—sir. But he isn’t let out in the field! We’re playing the game as much as you are, old—sir.” The plural number caused the captain to toss me a contemptuous look. “Is this the fellah who was taken when you swam for it?” he inquired, relapsing into his drawl. Raffles said I was, and with that took a passionate oath upon our absolute rectitude as volunteers. There could be no doubting him; but the officer’s eyes went back at the bottles on the stoop. “But look at those,” said he; and as he looked himself the light eye melted in his fiery face. “And I’ve got Sparklets in my tent,” he sighed. “You make it in a minute!” Not a word from Raffles, and none, you may be sure, from me. Then suddenly Bellingham told me where his tent was, and, adding that our case was one for serious consideration, strode in its direction without another word until some sunlit paces separated us. “You can bring that stuff with you,” he then flung over a shoulder-strap, “and I advise you to put it where you had it before.” A trooper saluted him some yards further on, and looked evilly at us as we followed with our loot. It was Corporal Connal of ours, and the thought of him takes my mind off the certainly gallant captain who only that day had joined our division with the reinforcements. I could not stand the man myself. He added soda-water to our whiskey in his tent, and would only keep a couple of bottles when we came away. Softened by the spirit, to which disuse made us all a little sensitive, our officer was soon convinced of the honest part that we were playing for once, and for fifty minutes of the hour we spent with him he and Raffles talked cricket without a break. On parting they even shook hands; that was Long John in the captain’s head; but the snob never addressed a syllable to me.