noon
Hang it , I wish Holm were here . He 's a depressing beggar , but he takes responsibility off my shoulders . '' The dead men were buried as quickly and decently as the place allowed of . Things were generally cleaned up , and by noon the little fort was as spick as if the sound of a rifle had never been heard within its walls . Lewis and Andover had the midday meal in a sort of gun-room which looked over the edge of the plateau to a valley in the hills . It had been arranged and furnished by a former commandant who found in the view a repetition of the one in a much-loved Highland shooting-box . Accordingly it was comfortable and homelike beyond the average of frontier dwellings .