drinking to my new honours. The place was the Bear Inn, in Farnham;
the liquor, warmed ale; and I paid the scot. Towards midnight
Sergeant Inch had so far forgot his rancour as to strike up his song
of _Robin and the Night Owl_--'Robin,' I should explain, being the
Earl of Essex, and the 'Night Owl' our own general, so nicknamed for
his activities after dark.

We broke no regulations by this revelry, being allowed by custom,
after a night in saddle, to spend the next as we chose, provided that
we kept to quarters. For me, though I had done better in bed,
snatching a little sleep, the time was past for seeking it. A picket
of ours had been flung out to westward of the town, on the Alton
Road, and at twelve o'clock I was due to relieve it. So I pushed the
drink around, and felt their grudge against me lessening while
Sergeant Inch sang,--

'Robin's asleep, for Robin is nice;
Robin has delicate habits;
But "Whoo!" says the gray Night Owl--once, twice,
And three times "Whoo!" for the little shy mice,
The mice and the rats and the rabbits,
"Who-oo!"'

At the close of every verse he mimicked an owl's call to the life--
having in his young days been a verderer of the New Forest, on the
edge of Bradley Plain; and at the end of his third verse, in the
middle of a hoot, was answered by a trumpet not far away upon the
road to Alton.

At the sound of it we sprang up, all of us, and two or three ran out