morning, noon, and night with unmeaning ribaldries and obscenities,
and was stale with the smoke of bad tobacco and the fumes of that most
indifferent beer. I learned that I was bound for Ireland, and that the
head-quarters of my regiment were at Cahir. One respectable old depot
sergeant took some interest in my quiet and isolation. 'You'll be out of
this lot soon,' he said, 'and you'll never see anything like it again.
These chaps'll learn manners when they join the colours; and you're
lucky in the regiment you're going to--there's no smarter in the
service.'

I have made one or two uncomfortable journeys in my time, but I can
recall nothing quite so comfortless as the march with that ragged and
disreputable contingent along Piccadilly, across Hyde Park, down the
Edgware Road, and so on to Paddington Station. It was all very well for
the sore and rebellious heart to be singing inwardly, 'Yes, let me like
a soldier fall,' but this was a sordid beginning for military glory,
and I would sooner have been shot outright than I would have encountered
anybody I knew on that journey. I reached the station unobserved, so far
as I know, and was glad to hide myself in a third-class carriage, into
which the sergeant in charge of the party beckoned me. He was very kind
and friendly indeed, advising me in a score of ways suggested by his own
experience, and talking constantly with his hand upon my shoulder. I had
begun to think him quite a genuine good fellow, and my heart was warming
to him, when he let the cat out of the bag.

I was handsomely attired, and the morning suit I was wearing was barely
a week old. He was good enough to offer me ten shillings and a rig-out
for a scarecrow in exchange for it. I declined the friendly offer,
and the sergeant cooled. He condescended to accept a drink at Didcot
Junction; indeed, he did me the honour to ask for it; but when it was
consumed he ordered me into a carriage already fully occupied by half a
score of my fellow recruits, and in their society I finished the journey
to Bristol.

We put up at the Gloucester Barracks, which, as I understood, had once
been an hotel, and the escort sergeant, who had turned spiteful, set me
to work to carry coal upstairs.

This was my first experience of fatigue duty, and I was kept at it
till I was very fatigued indeed, and my smart summer trousers and
spick-and-span shirt-cuffs were a little damaged. This duty over, I met
the escort sergeant no more, b