e again.

The stormy passage ended delightfully amidst the quiet beauties and
serene shelter of the Cove of Cork. I have seen a great many of the
world's show-places since 1865, and I dare say that my inexperience
counted for much; but I cannot recall any natural spectacle which
afforded me a more genuine delight. It was the morning of the 30th of
May. The sun was just rising, and the roofs and spires of the city
were outlined against a lucent belt of sky. Spike Island lay green and
smiling in the middle of the cove; and on either side, on the emerald
slopes, white villas were dotted here and there. The whole scene looked
very sweet and pure and homelike, and there were certain thoughts in my
own mind which made the view memorable.

We were all bundled up to the Cat's Hill Barracks, and there held over
Sunday. My companions melted away unregarded, and I travelled down to
Cahir under the charge of a decent old fellow who did not try to buy my
clothes, but spent a good deal of time in exhorting me to write to my
friends and beg their pardon for having made a fool of myself.

'Yell be doing it late,' he said, 'and ye may as well be doing it soon.'

I was quite lonely and sore enough to have taken the advice, and
military glory looked a long way off; but a silly pride withheld me, and
I pretended to feel well satisfied with my prospects and surroundings.

When I came to understand things a little I could see that the regiment
was in a splendid state of discipline and efficiency. It had not been so
a few years before, when the Lieutenant Robinson episode at Birmingham
had brought the command of Colonel Bentinck into grave disrepute.
Lieutenant-Colonel Shute, on whom the actual charge of the regiment
devolved, set to work to bring cosmos out of chaos; and did it, though
it took him a day or two of very uphill work. I know more of what a
regiment should be than I did then, and I do not ask a firmer or a
more judicious discipline. The men were enthusiastically loyal to their
colonel, and believed in him as if he had been a sort of deity. I am
persuaded that they would have gone anywhere and have done anything for
him. There is nothing the British soldier respects like justice, and he
likes it none the less if it is a little stern. We all had a holy dread
of the colonel, though he was not a bit more of a martinet than any good
officer should be; and his wife, who had a habit of giving autographed
Prayer Books to the men, was