ver from the Artillery camp to attend a dreary mess
dinner, and contributed to the general gloom by nearly weeping over the
condition of his beloved Battery. Porkiss so far forgot himself as to
insinuate that the presence of the officers could do no earthly good,
and that the best thing would be to send the entire Regiment into
hospital and 'let the doctors look after them.' Porkiss was demoralised
with fear, nor was his peace of mind restored when Revere said coldly:
'Oh! The sooner you go out the better, if that's your way of thinking.
Any public school could send us fifty good men in your place, but it
takes time, time, Porkiss, and money, and a certain amount of trouble,
to make a Regiment. 'S'pose you're the person we go into camp for, eh?'

Whereupon Porkiss was overtaken with a great and chilly fear which a
drenching in the rain did not allay, and, two days later, quitted this
world for another where, men do fondly hope, allowances are made for the
weaknesses of the flesh. The Regimental Sergeant-Major looked wearily
across the Sergeants' Mess tent when the news was announced.

'There goes the worst of them,' he said. 'It'll take the best, and then,
please God, it'll stop.' The Sergeants were silent till one said: 'It
couldn't be him!' and all knew of whom Travis was thinking.

Bobby Wick stormed through the tents of his Company, rallying,
rebuking, mildly, as is consistent with the Regulations, chaffing the
faint-hearted; haling the sound into the watery sunlight when there
was a break in the weather, and bidding them be of good cheer for
their trouble was nearly at an end; scuttling on his dun pony round
the outskirts of the camp, and heading back men who, with the innate
perversity of British soldiers, were always wandering into infected
villages, or drinking deeply from rain-flooded marshes; comforting the
panic-stricken with rude speech, and more than once tending the dying
who had no friends the men without 'townies'; organising, with banjos
and burnt cork, Sing-songs which should allow the talent of the
Regiment full play; and generally, as he explained, 'playing the giddy
garden-goat all round.'

'You're worth half-a-dozen of us, Bobby,' said Revere in a moment of
enthusiasm. 'How the devil do you keep it up?'

Bobby made no answer, but had Revere looked into the breast-pocket of
his coat he might have seen there a sheaf of badly-written letters which
perhaps accounted for the power that possessed the