a fellow," would Rake say in confidential moments over
purl and a penn'orth of bird's-eye, his experience in the Argentine
Republic having left him with strongly aristocratic prejudices; "but
when it comes to a duffer like that, that knows no better than me,
what ain't a bit better than me, and what is as clumsy a duffer about a
horse's plates as ever I knew, and would almost let a young 'un buck him
out of his saddle--why, then I do cut up rough, I ain't denying it; and
I don't see what there is in his Stripes to give him such a license to
be aggravating."

With which Rake would blow the froth off his pewter with a puff of
concentrated wrath, and an oath against his non-commissioned officers
that might have let some light in upon the advocates for "promotion
from the ranks," had they been there to take the lesson. At last, in the
leisure of Brighton, the storm broke. Rake had a Scotch hound that
was the pride of his life; his beer-money often going instead to buy
dainties for the dog, who became one of the channels through which Warne
could annoy and thwart him. The dog did no harm, being a fine, well-bred
deerhound; but it pleased the Corporal to consider that it did, simply
because it belonged to Rake, whose popularity in the corps, owing to
his good nature, his good spirits, and his innumerable tales of American
experience and amorous adventures, increased the jealous dislike which
his knack with an unbroken colt and his abundant stable science had
first raised in his superior.

One day in the chargers' stables the hound ran out of a loose box with a
rush to get at Rake, and upset a pailful of warm mash. The Corporal, who
was standing by in harness, hit him over the head with a heavy whip he
had in his hand; infuriated by the pain, the dog flew at him, tearing
his overalls with a fierce crunch of his teeth. "Take the brute off, and
string him up with a halter; I've put up with him too long!" cried Warne
to a couple of privates working near in their stable dress. Before the
words were out of his mouth Rake threw himself on him with a bound
like lightning, and, wrenching the whip out of his hands, struck him a
slashing, stinging blow across his face.

"Hang my hound, you cur! If you touch a hair of him, I'll double-thong
you within an inch of your life!"

And assuredly he would have kept his word, had he not been made a
prisoner and marched off to the guardroom.

Rake learned the stern necessity of the law, whic