The Doctor of Pimlico | Page 3

who lived close to St. Fillans, on the picturesque Loch Earn, when the general, hearing of his presence in the neighbourhood, had sent him an invitation to accompany him on his inspection.
Walter had accepted for one reason only. In the invitation the general had remarked that he and his stepdaughter Enid were staying at the Panmure Hotel at Monifieth--so well known to golfers--and that after the inspection he hoped they would lunch together.
Now, Walter had met Enid Orlebar six months before at Biarritz, where she had been nursing at the Croix Rouge Hospital in the H?tel du Palais, and the memory of that meeting had lingered with him. He had long desired to see her again, for her pale beauty had somehow attracted him--attracted him in a manner that no woman's face had ever attracted him before.
Hitherto he had held cynical notions concerning love and matrimony, but ever since he had met Enid Orlebar in that winter hotel beside the sea, and had afterwards discovered her to be stepdaughter of Sir Hugh Elcombe, he had found himself reflecting upon his own loneliness.
At luncheon he was to come face to face with her again. It was of this he was thinking more than of the merits of mountain batteries or the difficulties of limbering or unlimbering.
"See! there they are!" exclaimed the general, suddenly pointing with his gloved hand.
Fetherston strained his eyes towards the horizon, but declared that he could detect nothing.
"They're lying behind that rising ground to the left of the magazine yonder," declared the general, whose keen vision had so often served him in good stead. Then, turning on his heel and scanning the grey horizon seaward, he added: "They're going to fire out on to the Gaa between those two lighthouses on Buddon Ness. By Jove!" he laughed, "the men in them will get a bit of a shock."
"I shouldn't care much to be there, sir," remarked Tredennick.
"No," laughed the general. "But really there's no danger--except that we're just in the line of their fire."
So they struck off to the left and approached the position by a circuitous route, being greeted by the colonel and other officers, to whom the visit of Sir Hugh Elcombe had been a considerable surprise.
The serviceable-looking guns were already mounted and in position, the range had been found; the reserves, the ponies and the pipers were lying concealed in a depression close at hand when they arrived.
The general, after a swift glance around, stood with legs apart and arms folded to watch, while Fetherston and Tredennick, with field-glasses, had halted a little distance away.
A sharp word of command was given, when next instant the first gun boomed forth, and a shell went screaming through the air towards the low range of sand-hills in the distance.
The general grunted. He was a man of few words, but a typical British officer of the type which has made the Empire and won the war against the Huns. He glanced at the watch upon his wrist, adjusted his monocle, and said something in an undertone to the captain.
The firing proceeded, while Fetherston, his ears dulled by the constant roar, watched the bursting shells with interest.
"I wonder what the lighthouse men think of it now?" he laughed, turning to his friend. "A misdirected shot would send them quickly to kingdom come!"
Time after time the range was increased, until, at last, the shells were dropped just at the spot intended. As each left the gun it shrieked overhead, while the flash could be seen long before the report reached the ear.
"We'll see in a few moments how quickly they can get away," the general said, as he approached Fetherston.
Then the order was given to cease fire. Words of command sounded, and were repeated in the rear, where ponies and men lay hidden. The guns were run back under cover, and with lightning rapidity dismounted, taken to pieces, and loaded upon the backs of the ponies, together with the leather ammunition cases--which looked like men's suit cases--and other impedimenta.
The order was given to march, and, headed by the pipers, who commenced their inspiring skirl to the beat of the drums, they moved away over the rough, broken ground, the general standing astraddle and watching it all through his monocle with critical eye, and keeping up a fire of sarcastic comment directed at the colonel.
"Why!" he cried sharply in his low, strident voice, "what's that bay there? Too weak for the work--no good. You want better stuff than that. An axle yonder not packed properly! . . . And look at that black pony--came out of a governess-cart, I should think! . . . Hey, you man there, you don't want to hang on that pack! Men get lazy and want the pony to help them along. And you----" he cried, as