One of the things which make life on this planet more or lessagreeable is the speed with which alarums, excursions, excitement, androws generally, blow over. A nine-days' wonder has to be a bigbusiness to last out its full time nowadays. As a rule the third daysees the end of it, and the public rushes whooping after some otherhare that has been started for its benefit. The guard-tent row, as faras the bulk of camp was concerned, lasted exactly two days; at the endof which period it was generally agreed that all that could be said onthe subject had been said, and that it was now a back number. Nobody,except possibly the authorities, wanted to find out the authors of theraid, and even Private Jones had ceased to talk about it--this owingto the unsympathetic attitude of his tent.
"Jones," the corporal had observed, as the ex-sentry's narrative ofhis misfortunes reached a finish for the third time since_reveille_ that morning, "if you can't manage to switch off thatinfernal chestnut of yours, I'll make you wash up all day and sit onyour head all night."So Jones had withdrawn his yarn from circulation. Kennedy's interest indetective work waned after his interview with Walton. He was quite surethat Walton had been one of the band, but it was not his business tofind out; even had he found out, he would have done nothing. It wasmore for his own private satisfaction than for the furtherance ofjustice that he wished to track the offenders down. But he did notlook on the affair, as Jimmy Silver did, as rather sporting; he hada tender feeling for the good name of the school, and he felt thatit was not likely to make Eckleton popular with the other schoolsthat went to camp if they got the reputation of practical jokers.
Practical jokers are seldom popular until they have been dead ahundred years or so.
As for Walton and his colleagues, to complete the list of those whowere interested in this matter of the midnight raid, they layremarkably low after their successful foray. They imagined thatKennedy was spying on their every movement. In which they were quitewrong, for Kennedy was doing nothing of the kind. Camp does not allowa great deal of leisure for the minding of other people's businesses.
But this reflection did not occur to Walton, and he regarded Kennedy,whenever chance or his duties brought him into the neighbourhood ofthat worthy's tent, with a suspicion which increased whenever thelatter looked at him.
On the night before camp broke up, a second incident of a sensationalkind occurred, which, but for the fact that they never heard of it,would have given the schools a good deal to talk about. It happenedthat Kennedy was on sentry-go that night. The manner of sentry-go isthus. At seven in the evening the guard falls in, and patrols thefringe of the camp in relays till seven in the morning. A guardconsists of a sergeant, a corporal, and ten men. They are on duty fortwo hours at a time, with intervals of four hours between each spell,in which intervals they sleep the sleep of tired men in theguard-tent, unless, as happened on the occasion previously described,some miscreant takes it upon himself to loose the ropes. The ground tobe patrolled by the sentries is divided into three parts, each ofwhich is entrusted to one man.
Kennedy was one of the ten privates, and his first spell of sentry-gobegan at eleven o'clock.
On this night there was no moon. It was as black as pitch. It isalways unpleasant to be on sentry-go on such a night. The mindwanders, in spite of all effort to check it, through a long series ofall the ghastly stories one has ever read. There is one in particularof Conan Doyle's about a mummy that came to life and chased people onlonely roads--but enough! However courageous one may be, it isdifficult not to speculate on the possible horrors which may springout on one from the darkness. That feeling that there is somebody--orsomething--just behind one can only be experienced in all its force bya sentry on an inky night at camp. And the thought that, of all thehundreds there, he and two others are the only ones awake, puts a sortof finishing touch to the unpleasantness of the situation.
Kennedy was not a particularly imaginative youth, but he lookedforward with no little eagerness to the time when he should berelieved. It would be a relief in two senses of the word. His beatincluded that side of the camp which faces the road to Aldershot.
Between camp and this road is a ditch and a wood. After he had been onduty for an hour this wood began to suggest a variety ofpossibilities, all grim. The ditch, too, was not without associations.
It was into this that Private Jones had been hurled on a certainmemorable occasion. Such a thing was not likely to happen again in thesame week, and, even if it did, Kennedy flattered himself that hewould have more to say in the matter than Private Jones had had; butnevertheless he kept a careful eye in that direction whenever his beattook him along the ditch.
It was about half-past twelve, and he had entered upon the lastsection of his two hours, when Kennedy distinctly heard footsteps inthe wood. He had heard so many mysterious sounds since his patrolbegan at eleven o'clock that at first he was inclined to attributethis to imagination. But a crackle of dead branches and the sound ofsoft breathing convinced him that this was the real thing for once,and that, as a sentry of the Public Schools' Camp on duty, it behovedhim to challenge the unknown.
He stopped and waited, peering into the darkness in a futile endeavourto catch a glimpse of his man. But the night was too black for thekeenest eye to penetrate it. A slight thud put him on the right track.
It showed him two things; first, that the unknown had dropped into theditch, and, secondly, that he was a ca............