pretty much unreformed; though I dare
say its walls get a coat or two more whitewash than they did when I was
intimate with them.

I have kept for this place in a rambling record a story which might have
been told in my last paper. When I left the barracks of Ballincollig and
said good-bye to her Majesty's service, I had an encounter with one of
my non-commissioned enemies. I had my leave of absence in my pocket, and
my discharge was to follow me by post I was in civilian dress and was
smoking a cigar at the barrack gates. My enemy saluted before he had had
time to recognise me, and then, seeing to whom he had done this homage,
stood abashed at himself for a minute and then exploded. He could think
of nothing better to say than to order me to put out my cigar. I refused
to obey, for I was yards beyond the magazine limit, within which it was,
of course, forbidden to smoke, and I gave that sergeant a piece of my
mind. One is a good deal more vehement at nineteen than one grows to be
when creeping on towards the fifties, and I made my sergeant a dreadful
promise. I told him that he had acted like an unmitigated brute to me,
and I undertook, if ever I should meet him in civil life, to inflict
upon him a chastisement which should repay us both amply. I never met
him again for thirteen years, and I was slumming when I ran against him.
He was acting as commissionaire at a big manufacturing place in the East
End, and when I accosted him he had no idea of my identity. I wore a
beard and had taken to wearing spectacles, and, if ever I had looked
warlike, had lost that aspect long ago. I asked him if he were
Sergeant ----. He admitted that at once. He had served in the Fourth
Royal Irish?

'Seventeen years, sir; but I don't remember you.'

He had been quartered at Cahir, I reminded him, in the year '65, and
in '66 at Ballincollig. He admitted that quite willingly and seemed
interested. Did he remember a recruit who was nicknamed 'Oxford?' He
thought he remembered that recruit, and paled visibly. He was not the
stalwart fellow he had been, but looked bowed down as if by a premature
old age. I asked him why he had left his regiment.

'Hernia, sir; hernia and pulmonary consumption,'

I had promised this man a hiding thirteen years ago, and thirteen years
ago I am persuaded he had richly merited it, and am quite sure it would
have done him good. It is very likely that at that time I might have
been unable to give it him; but now