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Updated: June 8, 2025
John Broom went back as carefully as he had come, and slipped in to warm himself by the guardroom fire. It was a good one, and the soldiers sat close round it. The officer was writing a letter in another room, and in a low, impressive voice, the sergeant was telling a story which was listened to with breathless attention. John Broom was fond of stories, and he listened also.
Forty men swarmed over him. Once within the palace walls, Wilson and Stubbs found their hands full. They realized as they charged through the outer guardroom and down the dark, oak-furnished hall that this gang at their heels would be difficult to control within the intricate mazes of this old building.
For, in general the coffee rooms reeked with tobacco like a guardroom: and strangers sometimes expressed their surprise that so many people should leave their own firesides to sit in the midst of eternal fog and stench. Nowhere was the smoking more constant than at Will's. That celebrated house, situated between Covent Garden and Bow Street, was sacred to polite letters.
At the extreme right of the dais on which the table stood there was a small oaken door set in the wall and giving access to a small ante-room that was known, rightly or wrongly, as the abbot's chamber. That anteroom communicated directly with what was now the guardroom, which accounts for the new-comer being ushered in that way by the corporal at the time.
"One of you go two hundred yards along the road, and form an advance-post, so to speak. Challenge him the minute he's within ear-shot, and shoot him if he won't halt. If he halts, pass him along to Number Two. Number Two, pass him along to the guardroom, where I'll deal with him! Which of you's Number One? Number One, then forward quick march!"
When we asked our guide why we were quartered so far from the guardroom he replied that the custom of the older members of the guard of picking quarrels with aspirants to try their metal had resulted in so many deaths that it was found difficult to maintain the guard at its full strength while this custom prevailed.
"I don't want to go," blustered the bully. "Let Rover tell his yarn I don't care. It will be only another of his lies." "Then you shall go to the guardroom," said the teacher. "Rover, you may go to see the captain alone." "I will sir at once," and Tom made away. He had no sooner departed than George Strong marched Baxter off to the guardroom previously described.
He halted them outside the guardroom, and bullydamned two of them because some unimportant part of their accouterments was missing; and he "'Tshuned" them, and stood them at ease, and "'Tshuned" them again, until he had them jumping at the word. Then he marched them two abreast in and out among the huts in search of any sign of native servants. They found no sign of any one at all.
The rest-house was a barn and we were pretty lucky. We had straw to lie on. Notwithstanding our distance from the enemy, as Captain Johnson had said, we were in his country, and in consequence there had to be a guard. Four of the boys were picked for the job. There was no change in my luck. I was one of the chosen four. The guardroom, whether for good or ill, was set in a chicken house.
"Go easy!" he answered; wrapping a huge arm around each. "I would have you to know that I am a god, to be treated as such tho', by my faith, I fancy I've got to go to the guardroom just like a privit soldier." The latter part of the sentence destroyed the suspicions raised by the former. Any one would have been justified in regarding Mulvaney as mad.
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