short by the blast
of a whistle. The Colonel, at the other side of the square, has given
the signal for the end of parade. Simultaneously a bugle rings out
cheerfully from the direction of the orderly-room. Breakfast, blessed
breakfast, is in sight. It is nearly eight, and we have been as busy
as bees since six.

At a quarter to nine the battalion parades for a route-march. This,
strange as it may appear, is a comparative rest. Once you have got
your company safely decanted from column of platoons into column of
route, your labours are at an end. All you have to do is to march; and
that is no great hardship when you are as hard as nails, as we are
fast becoming. On the march the mental gymnastics involved by the
formation of an advanced guard or the disposition of a piquet line
are removed to a safe distance. There is no need to wonder guiltily
whether you have sent out a connecting-file between the vanguard and
the main-guard, or if you remembered to instruct your sentry groups as
to the position of the enemy and the extent of their own front.

Second Lieutenant Little heaves a contented sigh, and steps out
manfully along the dusty road. Behind him tramp his men. We have no
pipers as yet, but melody is supplied by "Tipperary," sung in ragged
chorus, varied by martial interludes upon the mouth-organ. Despise not
the mouth-organ. Ours has been a constant boon. It has kept sixty men
in step for miles on end.

Fortunately the weather is glorious. Day after day, after a sharp and
frosty dawn, the sun swings up into a cloudless sky; and the hundred
thousand troops that swarm like ants upon, the undulating plains of
Hampshire can march, sit, lie, or sleep on hard, sun-baked earth. A
wet autumn would have thrown our training back months. The men, as
yet, possess nothing but the fatigue uniforms they stand up in, so it
is imperative to keep them dry.

Tramp, tramp, tramp. "Tipperary" has died away. The owner of the
mouth-organ is temporarily deflated. Here is an opportunity for
individual enterprise. It is soon seized. A husky soloist breaks
into one of the deathless ditties of the new Scottish Laureate; his
comrades take up the air with ready response; and presently we are all
swinging along to the strains of "I Love a Lassie,"--"Roaming in
the Gloaming" and "It's Just Like Being at Hame" being rendered as
encores.

Then presently come snatches of a humorously amorous nature--"Hallo,
Hallo, Who's Your Lady Friend?"; "Yo