eg o' mutton the next, and
cold meat when we was obliged; but seems to me that it was all cooking
your roast chickens before they was hatched. Fancy lighting a fire
anywhere! Why, it would bring a swarm of the beauties round to carve us
up instead of the wittles; and as to prog, why, I ain't seen nothing but
that one bear. Don't seem to hanker after bear," continued Gedge after
a few minutes' musing, during which he made sure that Bracy was sleeping
comfortably. "Bears outer the 'Logical Gardens, nicely fatted up on
buns, might be nice, and there'd be plenty o' nice fresh bear's grease
for one's 'air; but these here wild bears in the mountains must feed
theirselves on young niggers and their mothers, and it'd be like being a
sort o' second-hand cannibal to cook and eat one of the hairy brutes.
No, thanky; not this time, sir. I'll wait for the pudden."

Human nature is human nature, which nobody can deny; and, uncultivated
save in military matters, and rough as he was, Bill Gedge was as human
as he could be. He had just had a tremendous tramp for a whole day, a
sleepless night of terrible excitement and care, a sudden respite from
anxiety, a meal, and the glow of a hot sun upon a patch of rock which
sent a genial thrill of comfort through his whole frame. These were the
difficulties which were weighing hard in one of the scales of the young
private's constitution, while he was doing his best to weigh down the
other scale with duty, principle, and a manly, honest feeling of liking
for the officer whom he had set up from the first moment of being
attached to the company as the model of what a soldier should be. It
was hard work. Those yawns came again and again, increasing in
violence.

"Well done, boa-constructor," he said. "Little more practice, and
you'll be able to swallow something as big as yourself; but my! don't it
stretch the corners of your mouth! I want a bit o' bear's grease ready
to rub in, for they're safe to crack.

"My! how sleepy I am!" he muttered a little later. "I ain't been put on
sentry-go, but it's just the same, and a chap as goes to sleep in the
face of the enemy ought to be shot. Sarve him right, too, for not
keeping a good lookout. Might mean all his mates being cut up. Oh! I
say, this here won't do," he cried, springing up. "Let's have a
hoky-poky penny ice, free, grashus, for nothing."

He went off on tiptoe, glancing at Bracy as he passed, and then stooped
down over a patc