'That's what happened,' he went on, 'and I don't care--only I wish it had been anybody but Burnett--though I suppose he was quite right; but it makes no odds ... I _had_ got the wind-up, and I _had_ failed with the party, and I don't deny it ... even if I wasn't really running when he saw me.... One thing I _can_ say--if I did have the wind-up I've never had cold feet--till that night.... I'm glad I came out this time if I did fail at the pinch.... Burnett wouldn't have.... I knew I was done when I came ... and I know I'm done now.
'But I wish you'd just explain it all to Peggy and the people who don't know.'
The Court-Martial was held in an old farm lying just outside the village. There was a large courtyard where the chickens clucked all day, and children and cattle roamed unchecked in the spacious midden. The court-room was unusually suitable to its purpose, being panelled all round in some dark wood with great black beams under a white-washed ceiling, high and vaulted, and an open hearth where the dry wood crackled heartlessly all day. Usually these trials are conducted in the best bedroom of some estaminet, and the Court sits defensively with a vast white bed at their backs. But this room was strangely dignified and legal: only at first Madame persisted in marching through it with saucepans to the kitchen--all these curious English functions were the same to her, a Christmas dinner, or a mess-meeting, or the trial of a soldier for his life.
The Court impressed me rather favourably--a Major-General, and four others. The Major-General, who was President of the Court, was a square, fatherly-looking person, with a good moustache, and rather hard blue eyes. He had many rows of ribbons, so many that as I looked at them from a dark corner at the back, they seemed like some regiment of coloured beetles, paraded in close column of companies. All these men were very excellently groomed: 'groomed' is the right word, for indeed they suggested a number of well-fed horses; all their skins were bright, and shiny, and well kept, and the leather of their Sam Brownes, and their field boots, and jingling spurs, and all their harness were beautiful and glistening in the firelight. I once went over the royal stables at Madrid. And when all these glossy creatures jingled heavily up to their table I was reminded of that. They sat down and pawed the floor restively with their well-polished hoofs, cursing in their hearts because they had been brought so far 'to do some damned court-martial.' But all their faces said, 'Thank God, at least I have had my oats to-day.'