a brazen
countenance, so that you shall tell a man a most bare-faced falsehood,
and afterwards adduce such connected proofs as especially characterize
actual facts. The following dialogue is a specimen of the talents of
the aforementioned mendacious personages.

C.--"See a man walk after he was shot dead! so have I, a whole day's
march."

B.--"Come, come, that's stealing a march on our senses. No, no, it
won't do: that's a naked one; do pray turn them out with some kind of
probability covering over them."

C.--"What, doubt my veracity;"

B.--"Not for the world; that would be illiberal and unkind, and by the
way, now I think on it, I believe the possibility of a man travelling
without his _cranium,_ for at the battle of Laswaree, during that
desperate contest for British India, I saw a sergeant of the
seventy-sixth shot dead; yet the fellow pursued his antagonist some
hundred yards afterwards, threatening vengeance on the miscreant for
having robbed the service of one of its best men. Finding himself weak
from loss of blood, he deliberately unscrewed his head, threw it
violently at the foe, and took him on the spine; down he tumbled; the
veteran jumped upon him; fearful was the struggle; chest to chest,
fist to fist; at last they joined in the death grapple, and dreadful
indeed was their dying hug."

C.--"My dear friend, I was an eye witness of the whole transaction.
You have however forgotten the best part of the story. After the
sergeant had well pummelled his enemy, he picked up his head again,
and thrust into a neighbouring great gun: from the want of his
_peepers_ he made a random shot, and killed the horse on which Lord
Lake was riding--his Lordship saluted the sod."

B.--"I recollect it perfectly; for the nose of the said sergeant
(recognised by sundry carbuncles) was so hard, that the following day
it was extracted from the abdomen of the unfortunate animal."

C.--"You make a mistake about the nose; it was discovered lodged in a
loaf in a corporal's knapsack; the man could swear to it, for it was
perforated by three balls, and otherwise curiously marked. Report said
that a shell had once blown it completely off, and that it was
stitched on again by a shoe-maker, who, ever after, went by the name
of the _nosy_ cobbler."

B.--"Nothing impossible. It reminds me of a story somewhat as strange:
During the battle of Delhi there was a quarter-master in the regiment,
a queer fellow, who was never at a loss; (h