'It does, too. Sharpe's voice hid the anger that was thick in him, an anger at an unguarded barracks where women's laughter mingled with tinkling music.

He went to the last door in the hallway, the one that he remembered opened into the Mess and from which came the laughter. He pushed the door slowly open, stood in the dark shadows of the hallway, and watched.

Three officers, all wearing the yellow facings and chained-eagle badge of the South Essex, were in the room. Two girls were with them, one sitting at the spinet, the other blindfolded in the centre of the room.

They were playing blind-man's buff.

The officers laughed, they dodged the lunges of the blindfolded girl. One of them stood guard so that she should not stumble into a low table that carried a tea of thin sandwiches, small pastries, and delicate porcelain cups. That officer, a Captain, was the first to see Sharpe.

The Captain made a mistake. It was common enough error. In Spain men often mistook Sharpe for a private soldier for the Rifleman wore no badges of rank on his shoulders, and his red, whip-tasselled officer's sash had long been lost. He wore an officer's weapon, a sword, but in the hall's shadow the Captain did not see it. He only saw the rifle on Sharpe's shoulder and he assumed, naturally enough, that only a private would carry a long-arm. Harry Price, whose uniform was more conventional, was hidden behind Sharpe.

The Captain frowned. He was a young man with a sharp-featured, thin-lipped face beneath carefully waved blond hair. The smile he had worn for the game was suddenly replaced by irritation. 'Who the devil are you? His voice was confident, the voice of the young master in his little domain, and it stopped the blindfolded girl in her tracks.