satisfied.

"Well, I drink to you, Feversham," he said, "with all the proper
sentiments."

"I too, old man," said Willoughby, obediently following his senior's
lead.

Thus they drank their comrade's health, and as their empty glasses
rattled on the table, there came a knock upon the door.

The two officers looked up. Durrance turned about from the window.
Feversham said, "Come in;" and his servant brought in to him a telegram.

Feversham tore open the envelope carelessly, as carelessly read through
the telegram, and then sat very still, with his eyes upon the slip of
pink paper and his face grown at once extremely grave. Thus he sat for
an appreciable time, not so much stunned as thoughtful. And in the room
there was a complete silence. Feversham's three guests averted their
eyes. Durrance turned again to his window; Willoughby twisted his
moustache and gazed intently upward at the ceiling; Captain Trench
shifted his chair round and stared into the glowing fire, and each man's
attitude expressed a certain suspense. It seemed that sharp upon the
heels of Feversham's good news calamity had come knocking at the door.

"There is no answer," said Harry, and fell to silence again. Once he
raised his head and looked at Trench as though he had a mind to speak.
But he thought the better of it, and so dropped again to the
consideration of this message. And in a moment or two the silence was
sharply interrupted, but not by any one of the expectant motionless
three men seated within the room. The interruption came from without.

From the parade ground of Wellington Barracks the drums and fifes
sounding the tattoo shrilled through the open window with a startling
clearness like a sharp summons, and diminished as the band marched away
across the gravel and again grew loud. Feversham did not change his
attitude, but the look upon his face was now that of a man listening,
and listening thoughtfully, just as he had read thoughtfully. In the
years which followed, that moment was to recur again and again to the
recollection of each of Harry's three guests. The lighted room, with the
bright homely fire, the open window overlooking the myriad lamps of
London, Harry Feversham seated with the telegram spread before him, the
drums and fifes calling loudly, and then dwindling to music very small
and pretty--music which beckoned where a moment ago it had commanded:
all these details made up a picture of which the colours were not to
fade