tive doer; and the battle had been a terrible one.

The weary old joke of having a heavy valise pulled down on to one's
upturned face from the shelf above, by means of a string, as one
sleeps, Dam had taken in good part. Being sent to the Rough-Riding
Sergeant-Major for the "Key of the Half Passage" by this senior
recruit, he did not mind in the least (though he could have kicked
himself for his gullibility when he learned that the "Half Passage" is
not a place, but a Riding-School manoeuvre, and escaped from the
bitter tongue of the incensed autocrat--called untimely from his tea!
How the man had _bristled_. Hair, eyebrows, moustache, buttons
even--the Rough-Riding Sergeant-Major had been rough indeed, and had
done his riding rough-shod over the wretched lad).

Being instructed to "go and get measured for his hoof-picker" Dam had
not resented, though he had considered it something of an insult to
his intelligence that Hawker should expect to "have" him so easily as
that. He had taken in good part the arrangement of his bed in such a
way that it collapsed and brought a pannikin of water down with it,
and on to it, in the middle of a cold night. He had received with good
humour, and then with silent contempt, the names of "Gussie the Bank
Clurk," references to "broken-dahn torfs" and "tailor's bleedn'
dummies," queries as to the amount of "time" he had got for the
offence that made him a "Queen's Hard Bargain," and various the other
pleasantries whereby Herbert showed his distaste for people whose
accent differed from his own, and whose tastes were unaccountable.

Dam had borne these things because he was certain he could thrash the
silly animal when the time came, and because he had a wholesome dread
of the all-too-inevitable military "crimes" (one of which fighting
is--as subversive of good order and military discipline).

It had come, however, and for Dam this exotic of the Ratcliffe Highway
had thereafter developed a vast admiration and an embarrassing
affection. It was a most difficult matter to avoid his companionship
when "walking-out" and also to avoid hurting his feelings.

It was a humiliating and chastening experience to the man, who had
supported himself by boxing in booths at fairs and show-grounds, to
find this "bloomin' dook of a 'Percy,'" this "lah-de-dar 'Reggie'" who
looked askance at good bread-and-dripping, this finnicky "Clarence"
without a "bloody" to his conversation, this "blasted, up-the-pole