Right on before him there was another gateway, across which, in the soft summer evening light, a second sentry in white flannel jacket passed, with the light gleaming upon his triangular bayonet. One moment he thought of turning back; the next he had rejected this, and advanced. He had taken his course, and he must go on. The second sentry looked harder at him as he passed an open doorway from out of which came a puff of hot bad tobacco smoke; but the man seemed to pay no further heed as he went on and now found himself at what was evidently the front of the barracks, and directly afterward a burst of music fell upon his ears. It sounded very welcome, and, walking in the direction, he passed a couple of large open windows, from whence came the clatter of silver upon china and the buzz of voices accompanied by sundry odours of an agreeable nature, which reminded him of the fact that he had eaten nothing since his hurried breakfast. "The mess-room," he said to himself. The officers were dining; and the band was playing selections during that function. Richard passed on, thinking, and with his spirits going down like the mercury in a weather-glass before a storm. In a short time he, in all probability, would have been an officer attached to some regiment, while now he was a fugitive and a vagabond on the face of the earth. "Not even fit to be a private," he said to himself; and then, attracted by the music, he turned and walked back, to stop between the two windows, listening, and with the smell of the dinner making him forget his troubles in baser thoughts as his mouth began to water. Then the chink of glasses began to mingle with the buzz of voices. "Taking wine," muttered the listener; and he wondered whether it was Hock. _Pop_! "Champagne or Moselle," he muttered; and the report of a second cork taking flight from the bottle followed, and then a third, while the music went on. There was a row of iron railings in front of the windows, and Richard turned his back and rested it against them; for he was tired, and it was pleasant to listen to the music and feel himself close to a party of gentlemen just for a few minutes before he went back into the town to find out some place where he could get a meal and bed. All at once, after a loud passage, the band wound up with a series of chords, leaving the principal flute-player sustaining one long note and then dropping to the octave below, from which he started upon a series of runs, paused, and commenced a solo full of florid passages introductory to a delicious melody--one of those plaintive airs which, once heard, cling evermore to the memory.