bold, adroit, and quick-witted, ready to run any
risks, but bound to get information in the long run. I wish I could
lay my hands on a few Captain Grants."

McKay smarted under the sting of these reproaches, feeling they
applied, although scarcely so intended, to him. But there was no man,
after all, on the headquarter staff better fitted to remove them. With
his enterprising spirit and intimate acquaintance with many tongues,
he ought to be able to secure information that would be useful to his
chiefs.

Full of this idea, he rode down that afternoon to Balaclava, the
centre of all the rascaldom that had gathered around the base of the
Crimean army. He was in search of agents whom he could employ as
emissaries into the enemy's lines.

Putting up his horse, he mixed amongst the motley crowd that thronged
the "sutlers' town," as it was called, which had sprung up half-a-mile
outside Balaclava, to accommodate the swarms of strangers who, under
the strict rule of Colonel Harding, had been expelled from the port
itself.

The place was like a fair--a jumble of huts and shanties and ragged
canvas tents, with narrow, irregular lanes between them, in which the
polyglot traders bought and sold. Here were grave Armenians, scampish
Greeks from the Levant, wild-eyed Bedouins, Tartars from Asia Minor,
evil-visaged Italians, scowling Spaniards, hoarse-voiced, slouching
Whitechapel ruffians, with a well-developed talent for dealing in
stolen goods.

As McKay stood watching the curious scene, and replying rather curtly
to the eager salesmen, who pestered him perpetually to buy anything
and everything--food, saddlery, pocket-knives, horse-shoes, fire-arms,
and swords--he became conscious of a stir and flutter among the crowd.
It presently became strangely silent, and parted obsequiously, to
give passage to some great personage who approached.

This was Major Shervinton, the provost-marshal, supreme master and
autocrat of all camp-followers, whom he ruled with an iron hand. Close
behind him came two sturdy assistants--men who had once been drummers,
and were specially selected in an army where flogging was the chief
punishment for their prowess with the cat-o'-nine-tales.

Woe to the sutler, whatever his rank or nation, who fell foul of the
terrible provost! Summary arrest, the briefest trial, and a sharp
sentence peremptorily executed, in the shape of four dozen, was the
certain treatment of all who offended against martial law.