.

He applied to me at last so vile an epithet that, in the heat of
the moment, I forgot that I had a sabre in my hand, and, hitting out
straight from the shoulder, I landed him on the mouth with the guard of
the weapon. This, of course, was flat mutiny, and before I knew where
I was I was seized from behind, the sabre whirled in the air, and I was
lying all abroad with a sprained wrist. Then I was solemnly marched to
the guardroom, and there taken in charge to await an interview with the
colonel in the morning.

One of the men on guard had borrowed from the regimental library a
copy of Charles Reades 'It is Never too Late to Mend,' and I read that
masterpiece all the afternoon and as long into the night as the waning
light would allow. The guard-room bed, with its sloping board and wooden
pillow, made no very luxurious sleeping-place, and I was up at daylight
to finish the most absorbing and enchanting story I had ever, until
then, encountered. The book retains a great portion of its old charm and
power until this day for me, but at that time it shut out everything;
and though, for aught I knew to the contrary, I might be sentenced to
be flogged or shot, I resigned myself to the spell of the story as
completely as if the future had been altogether clear. The colonel was
rather dreadful when the time came, and I remember one axiom which I got
from him in the first three minutes of our interview.

'Well, what have you to say for yourself?'

'The fact is, sir,' I answered, 'this man has been most abominably
insolent.'

'Nonsense,' said the colonel; 'a private can be insolent to his
superior; a superior cannot be insolent to a private.'

I doubt whether the gallant colonel would have felt inclined to sustain
that thesis in the House of Commons, of which assembly he afterwards
became a popular and honoured member; but I dare say it did very well
as an orderly-room apothegm. It had to come out, however, that the
newly-made lance-corporal and I had had a fight a week or so before the
date of his promotion, and that I had come out uppermost. I spoke of the
corporal's language, but declined to repeat it One of the squad, who
was called in evidence, was less particular, and the colonel, in effect,
read the young non-com, a dreadful lesson and committed me to cells for
ten days, giving orders that I was not to be disgraced--by which was
meant that I was not to receive the prison crop which is made to mark
the ordinary turb