and ribald
reference to the Ulster Volunteers and their leader. M'Ostrich, who
was sitting on his bedding at the other side of the hut, promptly rose
to his feet, crossed the floor in three strides, and silently felled
the humorist to the earth. Plainly, if M'Ostrich comes safe through
the war, he is prepared for another and grimmer campaign.

Lastly, that jack-of-all trades and master of none, Private Dunshie.
As already recorded, Dunshie's original calling had been that of a
street news-vendor. Like all literary men, he was a Bohemian at heart.
Routine wearied him; discipline galled him; the sight of work made
him feel faint. After a month or two in the ranks he seized the first
opportunity of escaping from the toils of his company, by volunteering
for service as a Scout. A single experience of night operations in
a dark wood, previously described, decided him to seek some milder
employment. Observing that the regimental cooks appeared to be
absolved, by virtue of their office, not only from all regimental
parades, but from all obligations on the subject of correct attire and
personal cleanliness, he volunteered for service in the kitchen. Here
for a space--clad in shirt, trousers, and canvas shoes, unutterably
greasy and waxing fat--he prospered exceedingly. But one sad day he
was detected by the cook-sergeant, having just finished cleaning a
flue, in the act of washing his hands in ten gallons of B Company's
soup. Once more our versatile hero found himself turned adrift with
brutal and agonising suddenness, and bidden to exercise his talents
elsewhere.

After a fortnight's uneventful dreariness with his platoon, Dunshie
joined the machine-gunners, because he had heard rumours that these
were conveyed to and from their labours in limbered waggons. But he
had been misinformed. It was the guns that were carried; the gunners
invariably walked, sometimes carrying the guns and the appurtenances
thereof. His very first day Dunshie was compelled to double across
half a mile of boggy heathland carrying two large stones, meant to
represent ammunition-boxes, from an imaginary waggon to a dummy gun.
It is true that as soon as he was out of sight of the corporal he
deposited the stones upon the ground, and ultimately proffered two
others, picked up on nearing his destination, to the sergeant in
charge of the proceedings; but even thus the work struck him as
unreasonably exacting, and he resigned, by the simple process of
cutt