as the last touch
needed to upset Evelyn's unstable equilibrium. Her collapse was the
more complete by reason of the strain that had gone before.

At the first she entreated him to give up the dinner and to spend his
last evening with her; and upon his gentle but definite answer that
such a departure from precedent was hardly possible, she fell to
sobbing with the passionate unrestraint of a child. In vain Desmond
tried to reason with her, to assure her that these big nights on the
eve of active service were a time-honoured custom; and that all
married officers attended them as a matter of course.

"I would willingly stay at home to please you, Ladybird," he added,
"but the fellows would probably come round and carry me off by main
force. It would all be done in the way of a joke, of course; but can't
you see that any lack of regimental spirit on my part is a reflection
on you, which I won't have at any price?"

No, she could see nothing, poor distracted child, except that he was
rewarding her cruelly ill for the genuine effort at control she had
made for his sake; and having once lost hold upon herself, all the
pent-up fears and rebellion, at loss of him, found vent in a
semi-coherent outbreak of reproaches and tears, till Desmond finally
lost his patience, and went off to change for Mess in a mood of mind
ill-tuned to the boisterous night ahead of him.

"Big nights," an immemorial feature of army life, are a specially
marked feature of the Frontier, where the constant recurrence of
Border warfare, and the hardness of existence generally, produce more
frequent outbursts of the schoolboy spirit that characterises the
British soldier of all ranks; that carries him unafraid and undismayed
through heart-breaking campaigns; keeps him cheerful and uncomplaining
in the face of flagrant mismanagement, fell-climates, disaster, and
defeat. Big nights, sixty years ago, left a goodly number of men,
either under the table or in a condition only a few degrees less
undignified. But, in spite of the outcry against modern degeneration,
these things are not so to-day; and the big nights of the Frontier
Force, on the eve of active service, are singularly free from this,
the least admirable part of the programme.

The week before departure was necessarily a week of hard work,
culminating in the task of getting all details into perfect marching
order, and setting every item in readiness for the start at dawn. This
done, the British p