behind his back as he walked round growing more contemptuous at each step. The recruits did not dare to answer, for they were new boys in a strange school, who had called themselves soldiers at the Depôt in comfortable England.

'Not a single pair o' shoulders in the whole lot. I've seen some bad drafts in my time,-some bloomin' bad drafts; but this 'ere draft beats any draft I've ever known. Jock, come an' look at these squidgy, ham-shanked beggars.'

He ar

Learoyd was walking across the square. rived slowly, circled round the knot as a whale circles round a shoal of small fry, said nothing, and went away whistling.

'Yes, you may well look sheepy,' Ortheris squeaked to the boys. It's the likes of you breaks. the 'earts of the likes of us. We've got to lick you. into shape, and never a ha'penny extry do we get for so doin', and you ain't never grateful neither. Don't you go thinkin' it's the Colonel nor yet the company orf'cer that makes you. It's me, you Johnnie Raws -you Johnnie bloomin' Raws!'

A company officer had come up unperceived behind Ortheris at the end of this oration. You may be right, Ortheris,' he said quietly, but I shouldn't shout it.' The recruits grinned as Ortheris saluted and collapsed.

Some days afterwards I was privileged to look over the new batch, and they were everything that

F

Ortheris had said, and more. B. Company had been devastated by forty or fifty of them; and B. Company's drill on parade was a sight to shudder at. Ortheris asked them lovingly whether they had not been sent out by mistake, and whether they had not better post themselves back to their friends. Learoyd thrashed them methodically one by one, without haste but without slovenliness; and the older soldiers took the remnants from Learoyd and went over them in their own fashion. Mulvaney stayed in hospital, and grinned from the balcony when Ortheris called him a shirker and other worse

names.

we'll brew men av them 'Be vartuous an' parse

'By the grace av God yet,' Terence said one day. vere, me son. There's the makin's av colonels in that mob if we only go deep enough—wid a belt.'

'We!' Ortheris replied, dancing with rage. 'I just like you and your "we's." 'Ere's B. Company drillin' like a drunk Militia reg'ment.'

'So I've been officially acquent,' was the answer from on high; 'but I'm too sick this tide to make certain.'

'An' you, you fat Hirishman, shiftin' and shirkin' up there among the arrerroot an' the sago.'

'An' the port wine,-you've forgot the port wine, Orth'ris; it's none so bad.' Terence smacked his lips provokingly.

'And we're wore off our feet with these 'ere,

kangaroos. Come out o' that, an' earn your pay. Come on down outer that, an' do somethin' 'stead o' grinnin' up there like a Jew monkey, you frowsy'eaded Fenian.'

'When I'm better av my various complaints I'll have a little private talkin' wid you. In the meanwhile,-duck!'

Terence flung an empty medicine bottle at Ortheris's head and dropped into a long chair, and Ortheris came to tell me his opinion of Mulvaney three times over,-each time entirely varying all the words.

'There'll be a smash one o' these days,' he concluded. Well, it's none o' my fault, but it's 'ard on B. Company.'

It was very hard on B. Company, for twenty seasoned men cannot push twice that number of fools into their places and keep their own places at the same time. The recruits should have been more evenly distributed through the regiment, but it seemed good to the Colonel to mass them in a company where there was a large proportion of old soldiers. He found his reward early one morning when the battalion was advancing by companies in echelon from the right. The order was given to form company squares, which are compact little. bricks of men, very unpleasant for a line of charging cavalry to deal with. B. Company was on the left flank, and had ample time to know what was

going on. For that reason presumably it gathered itself into a thing like a decayed aloe-clump, the bayonets pointing anywhere in general and nowhere in particular, and in that clump, roundel, or mob, it stayed till the dust had gone down and the Colonel could see and speak. He did both, and the speaking part was admitted by the regiment to be the finest thing that the 'old man' had ever risen to since one delightful day at a sham-fight, when a cavalry division had occasion to walk over his line of skirmishers. He said, almost weeping, that he had given no order for rallying groups, and that he preferred to see a little dressing among the men occasionally. He then apologised for having mistaken B. Company for men. He said that they were but weak little children, and that since he could not offer them each a perambulator and a nursemaid (this may sound comic to read, but B. Company heard it by word of mouth and winced) perhaps the best thing for them to do would be to go back to squad drill. To that end he proposed sending them, out of their turn, to garrison duty in Fort Amara, five miles away, D. Company were next for this detestable duty and nearly cheered the Colonel. There he devoutly hoped that their own subalterns would drill them to death, as they were of no use in this their present life.

It was an exceedingly painful scene, and I made haste to be near B. Company barracks when parade

was dismissed and the men were free to talk. There was no talking at first because each old soldier took a new draft and kicked him very severely. The noncommissioned officers had neither eyes nor ears for these accidents. They left the barracks to themselves, and Ortheris improved the occasion by a speech. I did not hear that speech, but fragments of it were quoted for weeks afterwards. It covered the birth, parentage, and education of every man in the company by name: it gave a complete account of Fort Amara from a sanitary and social point of view; and it wound up with an abstract of the whole duty of a soldier, each recruit his use in life, and Otheris's views on the use and fate of the recruits of B. Company.

'You can't drill, you can't walk, you can't shoot, -you, you awful rookies! Wot's the good of you? You eats and you sleeps, and you eats, and you goes to the doctor for medicine when your innards is out o'order for all the world as if you was bloomin' generals. An' now you've topped it all, you bats'eyed beggars, with getting us druv out to that stinkin' Fort 'Ammerer. We'll fort you when we get out there; yes, an' we'll 'ammer you too. Don't you think you've come into the Harmy to drink lie on your cots

Heno, an' clot your comp'ny, an' an' scratch your fat heads. You can do that at 'ome sellin' matches, which is all you're fit for, you keb-huntin', penny-toy, bootlace, baggage-tout,