And then suddenly he felt very sleepy. He leaned against the wall, and
presently it seemed that sitting down would be less trouble, and then
that lying down would be more truly comfortable. A bell from very very
far away sounded the hour, twelve. Philip counted up to nine, but he
missed the tenth bell-beat, and the eleventh and the twelfth as well,
because he was fast asleep cuddled up warmly in the thick quilted
dressing-gown that Helen had made him last winter. He dreamed that
everything was as it used to be before That Man came and changed
everything and took Helen away. He was in his own little bed in his own
little room in their own little house, and Helen had come to call him.
He could see the sunlight through his closed eyelids--he was keeping
them closed just for the fun of hearing her try to wake him, and
presently he would tell her he had been awake all the time, and they
would laugh together about it. And then he awoke, and he was not in his
soft bed at home but on the hard floor of a big, strange gate-house, and
it was not Helen who was shaking him and saying, 'Here--I say, wake up,
can't you,' but a tall man in a red coat; and the light that dazzled his
eyes was not from the sun at all, but from a horn lantern which the man
was holding close to his face.
'What's the matter?' said Philip sleepily.
'That's the question,' said the man in red. 'Come along to the
guard-room and give an account of yourself, you young shaver.'
He took Philip's ear gently but firmly between a very hard finger and
thumb.
'Leave go,' said Philip, 'I'm not going to run away.' And he stood up
feeling very brave.
The man shifted his hold from ear to shoulder and led Philip through one
of those doors which he had thought of exploring by daylight. It was not
daylight yet, and the room, large and bare, with an arch at each end and
narrow little windows at the sides, was lighted by horn lanterns and
tall tapers in pewter candlesticks. It seemed to Philip that the room
was full of soldiers.
Their captain, with a good deal of gold about him and a very smart black
moustache, got up from a bench.
'Look what I've caught, sir,' said the man who owned the hand on
Philip's shoulder.
'Humph,' said the captain, 'so it's really happened at last.'
[Illustration: 'Here--I say, wake up, can't you?']
'What has?' said Philip.
'Why, you have,' said the captain. 'Don't be frightened, little man.'
'I'm not frightened,' said Philip, and added politely, 'I should be so
much obliged if you'd tell me what you mean.' He added something which
he had heard people say when they asked the way to the market or the
public gardens, 'I'm quite a stranger here,' he said.
A jolly roar of laughter went up from the red-coats.
'It isn't manners to laugh at strangers,' said Philip.
'Mind your own manners,' said the captain sharply; 'in this country
little boys speak when they're spoken to. Stranger, eh? Well, we knew
that, you know!'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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