Chapter ThreeThe first I knew about the Volunteers was when I woke the next morning to hear the regular tramp of marching feet. Of course I had seen plenty before, for with all the worry about Bonaparte invading, Wight was full of men in scarlet uniforms; regular army, Yeomanry, Volunteers and small boys who had borrowed their father's uniforms and paraded around in danger of a good whipping.
'Sarah!' Mother's roar wakened the whole house. 'Get yourself down here at once and get the shutters off the windows!'
There must have been a hundred of them, stalwart young men in scarlet tunics and white trousers marching toward the inn with their muskets against their shoulders and their feet rising and falling in unison, for all the world like a painted centipede thrumming its way across the gro
