g out on an Inspection Parade to waxing a moustache.

Trooper Bear professed to specialize as a model in the carrying of
liquor "like a man and a soldier". When by themselves, they made it a
point of honour to behave and speak as though in the clubs to which
they once belonged, to eat with washen hands and ordered attire, to
behave at table and elsewhere with that truest of consideration that
offends no man willingly by mannerism, appearance, word or act, and
which is the whole Art of Gentility.

They carefully avoided any appearance of exclusiveness, but sought
every legitimate opportunity of united companionship, and formed a
"mess" of eight at a table which just held that number, and on a
couple of benches each of which exactly fulfilled the slang expression
"room for four Dragoons on a form".

It was their great ambition to avoid the reproach of earning the
soubriquet "gentleman-ranker," a term that too often, and too justly,
stinks in the nostrils of officer, non-commissioned officer, and man
(for, as a rule, the "gentleman-ranker" is a complete failure as a
gentleman and a completer one as a ranker).

To prove a rule by a remarkably fine exception, these eight were among
the very smartest and best troopers of one of the smartest and best
Corps in the world--and to Damocles de Warrenne, their "Society of the
Knights of the dirty Square Table" was a Rock and a Salvation in the
midst of a howling sea of misery--a cool pool in a searing branding
Hell.

Trooper Bear's brief nap appeared to have revived him wonderfully.

"Let us, like the Hosts of Midian, prowl around this happy Sabbeth
eve, my dear," quoth he to Dam, "and, like wise virgins, up and smite
them, when we meet the Red-Caps.... No, I'm getting confused. It's
they up and smite us, when we've nothing to tip them.... I feel I
could be virtuous in your company--since you never offer beer to the
(more or less) fatherless and widowed--and since I'm stony. How _did_
you work that colossal drunk, Matty, when you came home on a stretcher
and the Red-Caps said you _'was the first-classest delirious-trimmings
as ever was, aseein' snakes somethink 'orrible,'_ and in no wise to be
persuaded _'as 'ow there wasn't one underyer bloomin' foot the 'ole
time'_. Oh you teetotallers!"

Dam shuddered and paled. "Yes, let's go for as long a walk as we can
manage, and get as far from this cursed place as time allows," he
replied.

His hair was still short and horribly ha