meself"--and
he glanced at Dam.

"Ketch the little swine at it," remarked Trooper Herbert Hawker, as
loudly as he dared, to his "towny," Trooper Henry Bone. "'Chawnst 'is
arm!' It's 'is bloomin' life 'e'd chawnce if that Young Jock got
settin' abaht 'im. Not 'arf!" and the exotic of the Ratcliffe Highway
added most luridly expressed improprieties anent the origins of the
Lance-Corporal, his erstwhile enemy and, now, superior officer, in
addition.

"That's enough," said Dam shortly.

"Yep. Quit those low-browed sounds, guttermut, or I'll get mad all
over," agreed Fish, whose marvellous vocabulary included no foul
words. There was no need for them.

"Hi halso was abaht ter request you not to talk beastial, Mr. 'Erbert
'Awker," chimed in Trooper "Henery" Bone, anxious to be on the side of
the saints. "Oo'd taike you to be the Missin' Hair of a noble 'ouse
when you do such--'Missin' Hair!' _Missin' Link_ more like," he added
with spurious indignation.

The allusion was to the oft-expressed belief of Trooper Herbert
Hawker, a belief that became a certainty and subject for bloodshed and
battle after the third quart or so, that there was a mystery about his
birth.

There was, according to his reputed papa....

The plotters plotted, and Dam completed the burnishing of his arms,
spurs, buckles, and other glittering metal impedimenta (the quantity
of which earned the Corps its barrack-room soubriquet of "the Polish
Its"), finished the flicking of spots of pipe-clay from his uniform,
and dressed for Guard.

Being ready some time before he had to parade, he sat musing on his
truckle-bed.

What a life! What associates (outside the tiny band of
gentlemen-rankers). What cruel awful _publicity_ of existence--that
was the worst of all. Oh, for a private room and a private coat, and a
meal in solitude! Some place of one's own, where one could express
one's own individuality in the choice and arrangement of property, and
impress it upon one's environment.

One could not even think in private here.

And he was called a _private_ soldier! A grim joke indeed, when the
crying need of one's soul was a little privacy.

A _private_ soldier!

Well--and what of the theory of Compensations, that all men get the
same sum-total of good and bad, that position is really immaterial to
happiness? What of the theory that more honour means also more
responsibility and worry, that more pay also means more expenses and
a more difficult po