be her presence, and swore that he would strain every
nerve to appear before her at the earliest possible moment a free man
with redeemed name--provided he could persuade himself he was not _a
congenital lunatic, an epileptic, a decadent--could cure himself of
his mental disease...._

CHAPTER XI.

MORE MYRMIDONS.

The truly busy man cannot be actively and consciously unhappy. The
truly miserable and despondent person is never continuously and
actively employed. Fits of deep depression there may be for the worker
when work is impossible, but, unless there be mental and physical
illness, sleep is the other anaesthetic, refuge--and reward.

The Wise thank God for Work and for Sleep--and pay large premia of
the former as Insurance in the latter.

To Damocles de Warrenne--to whom the name "Trooper Matthewson" now
seemed the only one he had ever had--the craved necessity of life and
sanity was _work_, occupation, mental and physical labour. He would
have blessed the man who sentenced him to commence the digging of a
trench ten miles long and a yard deep for morning and evening labour,
and to take over all the accounts of each squadron, for employment in
the heat of the day. There was no man in the regiment so
indefatigable, so energetic, so persevering, so insatiable of
"fatigues," so willing and anxious to do other people's duty as well
as his own, so restless, so untiring as Trooper Matthewson of E Troop.
For Damocles de Warrenne was in the Land of the Serpent and lived in
fear. He lived in fear and feared to live; he thought of Fear and
feared to think. He turned to work as, but for the memory of Lucille,
he would have turned to drink: he laboured to earn deep dreamless
sleep and he dreaded sleep. Awake, he could drug himself with work;
asleep, he was the prey--the bound, gagged helpless, abject prey--of
the Snake. The greediest glutton for work in the best working regiment
in the world was Trooper Matthewson--but for him was no promotion. He
was, alas, "unreliable"--apt to be "drunk and disorderly," drunk to
the point of "seeing snakes" and becoming a weeping, screaming
lunatic--a disgusting spectacle. And, when brought up for sentence,
would solemnly assure the Colonel that he was _a total abstainer_, and
stick to it when "told-off" for adding impudent lying to shameful
indulgence and sickening behaviour. No promotion for that type of
waster while Colonel the Earl of A---- commanded the Queen's Greys,
nor