"The chapel has not turned around, Lyon; but the sun has. It is late in
the afternoon, and that is the declining and not the rising sun that you
see."
"Good gracious, Sybil! Have I slept so late as this? Why did you let
me?"
"Because I slept myself; we all slept; even to Captain Pendleton, who
must have been overpowered by sleep on his way to his horse; for I have
just found him lying among the gravestones."
"What? Who? Pendleton asleep among the gravestones? Say that again. I
don't understand."
Sybil briefly repeated her statement.
Lyon started up, shook himself as if to arouse all his faculties, and
then went and douched his head and face with cold water, and finally, as
he dried them, he turned to Sybil and said: "What is all this that you tell me? Where is Pendleton? Come and show
me."
Sybil led the way to the spot where their friend lay in his heavy sleep.
"Good Heaven! He must have fallen down, or sunk down here, within three
minutes of leaving the church!" exclaimed Lyon Berners, gazing on the
sleeper.
"Something must have happened to us all, dear Lyon. Do you remember how
unreasonably gay we all were at supper last evening? We, too, who had
every reason to be very grave and even sad? And do you remember the
reaction? When we all grew so drowsy that we could hardly keep our eyes
open? And then there was something else, which I will tell you of by and
by. And now we have all slept fifteen or sixteen hours. Something
strange has happened to us, Lyon," said Sybil, slowly.
"Something has, indeed. But now we must arouse Pendleton. Good Heaven!
he may have caught his death by sleeping out all night," exclaimed Mr.
Berners, as he stooped down and shook the sleeper.
But it was not without difficulty that Lyon succeeded in arousing
Captain Pendleton, who, when he was fairly upon his feet, reeled like a
drunken man.
"Pendleton, Pendleton, wake up! What, man! what has happened to you?"
exclaimed Lyon, trying to steady the other upon his feet.
"Too late for roll-call. Bad example to the rank and file," murmured the
Captain, with some remnant of a camp-dream lingering in his mind.
Mr. Berners shook him roughly, while Sybil dipped up a double handful of
water from a little spring at their feet, and threw it up into his face.
This fairly aroused him.
"Whew-ew! Phiz! What's that for? What the demon's all this? What's the
matter?" he exclaimed, sneezing, coughing, and sputtering through the
water that Sybil had flung into his face.
"What's all this?" exclaimed Lyon Berners, echoing his question. "It is
that we are all robbed and murdered, and carried into captivity, for all
I know," he added, smiling, as he could not fail to do, at the droll
figure cut by his friend.