n, on and on it ran, thrilling its
hearers with appealing, impassioned tones, breathed by one who had
forgotten where he was--everything but the fact that the glorious theme
he loved had been cruelly murdered, and that he was bringing it back to
life; for it was one of his favourite airs.

In the utter silence a window was softly opened somewhere higher up,
then another and another, towards which the liquid, bird-like notes rose
in plaintive, long-drawn appeals, to come trickling down again in runs--
rising, falling, rising, falling, with a purity and strength which
seemed impossible as coming from that tiny instrument. Finally this
softened, grew lower and lower, till the last notes regularly died away
in the distance. And then, and then only, in the midst of a roar of
applause, Dick stood, piccolo in hand, as if he had been just woke up
from a musical dream by a flannel-jacketed private, bearing a drawn
bayonet, who said, savagely--

"Come out! You've no business here!"

"No, no, sentry; leave him alone!" said a loud voice; and Richard looked
up, to see that the windows were full of officers, whose scarlet
mess-vests, with their rows of tiny buttons, shone in the evening light.
Higher up there were ladies looking down; and then the musician glanced
sharply round and began to thrust his piccolo back into his
breast-pocket.

"Hold hard, there!" cried the same voice, and Richard looked quickly up,
to meet the dark eyes of a big, handsome, youngish man, who, napkin in
hand, towered above the others, but turned sharply round, and Richard
heard him say--

"May we have him in, sir?"

"Oh, yes!" came back in a quick, commanding voice, and the officer
looked out again.

"Here!" he cried, "we want you to come in and play."

"I--I beg your pardon--I--I--"

Dick got no further, for an officer's servant was at his elbow, looking
at him rather superciliously as he said--

"This way!"

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

"YOU MEANT IT, THEN?"

For one moment Richard flinched, and thought of making a run for it; the
next he was following the man.

"Why not?" he muttered. "I may as well, if they want me to. Why not
play for my living now?"

The next minute, with the feeling of shrinking gone, he was standing in
the mess-room, in one corner of which, partially hidden by a screen and
some palms, was the band, while close to him, leaning back in his chair,
was a fine, florid-looking, grey officer, evidently the colonel or maj