hampered in its ebb and flow by some jutting promontory or group of
boulders. Louder sounds suddenly broke this approach to silence;
they came from the camp of dragoons, were taken up further to the
right by the camp of the Hanoverians, and further on still by the
body of infantry. It was tattoo. Feeling no desire to sleep, she
listened yet longer, looked at Charles's Wain swinging over the
church tower, and the moon ascending higher and higher over the
right-hand streets of tents, where, instead of parade and bustle,
there was nothing going on but snores and dreams, the tired soldiers
lying by this time under their proper canvases, radiating like
spokes from the pole of each tent.

At last Anne gave up thinking, and retired like the rest. The night
wore on, and, except the occasional 'All's well' of the sentries, no
voice was heard in the camp or in the village below.



III. THE MILL BECOMES AN IMPORTANT CENTRE OF OPERATIONS

The next morning Miss Garland awoke with an impression that
something more than usual was going on, and she recognized as soon
as she could clearly reason that the proceedings, whatever they
might be, lay not far away from her bedroom window. The sounds were
chiefly those of pickaxes and shovels. Anne got up, and, lifting
the corner of the curtain about an inch, peeped out.

A number of soldiers were busily engaged in making a zigzag path
down the incline from the camp to the river-head at the back of the
house, and judging from the quantity of work already got through