CHAPTER VII. A CLUE
The guard-tent had disappeared.
Private Jones' bewildered eye, rolling in a fine frenzy from heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven, in search of the missing edifice, found it at last in a tangled heap upon the ground. It was too dark to see anything distinctly, but he perceived that the canvas was rising and falling spasmodically like a stage sea, and for a similar reason—because there were human beings imprisoned beneath it.
By this time the whole camp was up and doing. Figures in deshabille , dashing the last vestiges of sleep away with their knuckles, trooped on to the scene in twos and threes, full of inquiry and trenchant sarcasm.
"What are you men playing at? What's all the row about? Can't you finish that game of footer some other time, when we
