remendous rate. Still,
he did not care, having mastered the great truth that he would either
tall off the horse in exhaustion or arrive at Kingswood--and which of
the alternatives happened did not appear to him to matter seriously. The
whole affair was fantastic; it was unreal, in addition to being silly.
But, real or unreal, he would finish it. If he was a phantom and
Kingswood a mirage, the phantom would reach the mirage or sink senseless
into astral mud. He had Colonel Hullocher in mind, and, quite
illogically, he envisaged the Colonel as a reality. Often he had heard
of the ways of the Army, and had scarcely credited the tales told and
printed. Well, he now credited them. Was it conceivable that that madman
of a Colonel had packed him, George, off on such a wild and idiotic
errand in the middle of the night, merely out of caprice? Were such
doings--

He faintly heard voices through the rain, and the horse started at this
sign of life from the black, unknown world beyond the circle of
lantern-light. George was both frightened and puzzled. He thought of
ghosts and haunted moors. Then he noticed a penumbra round about the
form of what might be a small hillock to the left of the track. He
quitted the track, and cautiously edged his horse forward, having
commendably obscured the lantern beneath his overcoat. The farther side
of the hillock had been tunnelled to a depth of perhaps three feet; a
lantern suspended somehow in the roof showed the spade which had done
the work; it also showed, within the cavity, the two girls who had
accompanied the Brigade from Wimbledon, together with two soldiers. The
soldiers were rankers, but one of the girls talked with perfect
correctness in a very refined voice; the other was silently eating. Both
were obviously tired to the limit of endurance, and very dirty and
draggled. The gay colours of their smart frocks had, however, survived
the hardships of the day. George was absolutely amazed by the spectacle.
The vagaries of autocratic Colonels were nothing when compared to this
extravagance of human nature, this glimpse of the subterranean life of
regiments, this triumphant and forlorn love-folly in the midst of the
inclement, pitiless night. And he was touched, too. The glimmer of the
lantern on the green and yellow of the short skirts half disclosed under
the mackintoshes was at once pathetic and exciting. The girl who had
been eating gave a terrible scream; she had caught sight of the f