or pair of boots, a
world too large for him. His principal errands were to fetch liquor for
the soldiers. In arms and pockets he would sometimes carry a dozen
bottles at once, and fly back from the canteen or public-house without
breaking one.

Before the summer was over he was familiar with every barrack-room and
guard-room in the place; he had food to eat and coppers to spare, and he
shared his bits with the mongrel dogs who lived, as he did, on the
good-nature of the garrison.

It must be confessed that neatness was not among John Broom's virtues.
He looped his rags together with bits of string, and wasted his pence or
lost them. The soldiers standing at the bar would often give him a drink
out of their pewter-pots. It choked him at first, and then he got used
to it, and liked it. Some relics of Miss Betty's teachings kept him
honest. He would not condescend to sip by the way out of the soldiers'
jugs and bottles, as other errand-boys did, but he came to feel rather
proud of laying his twopence on the counter, and emptying his own pot of
beer with a grimace to the bystanders through the glass at the bottom.

One day he was winking through the froth of a pint of porter at the
canteen sergeant's daughter, who was in fits of laughing, when the
pewter was knocked out of his grasp, and the big Highlander's hand was
laid on his shoulder and bore him twenty or thirty yards from the place
in one swoop.

"I'll trouble ye to give me your attention," said the Highlander, when
they came to a standstill, "and to speak the truth. Did ye ever see me
the worse of liquor?"

John Broom had several remembrances of the clearest kind to that effect,
so he put up his arms to shield his head from the probable blow, and
said, "Yes, M'Alister."

"How often?" asked the Scotchman.

"I never counted," said John Broom; "pretty often."

"How many good-conduct stripes do you ken me to have lost of your ain
knowledge?"

"Three, M'Alister."

"Is there a finer man than me in the regiment?" asked the Highlander,
drawing up his head.

"That there's not," said John Broom, warmly.

"Our sairgent, now," drawled the Scotchman, "wad ye say he was a better
man than me?"

"Nothing like so good," said John Broom, sincerely.

"And what d'ye suppose, man," said the Highlander, firing with sudden
passion, till the light of his clear blue eyes seemed to pierce John
Broom's very soul--"what d'ye suppose has hindered me that I'm not
sairgent, wh