t it be for these? Wake up, Nonie, your mother
will be woild about you. Begad, the child might ha' fallen into the
ditch!'

[Illustration: He picked her up in the growing light, and set
her on his shoulder.--P. 23.]

He picked her up in the growing light, and set her on his shoulder,
and her fair curls touched the grizzled stubble of his temples.
Ortheris and Learoyd followed snapping their fingers, while Norah
smiled at them a sleepy smile. Then carolled Mulvaney, clear as a
lark, dancing the baby on his arm:--

'If any young man should marry you,
Say nothin' about the joke;
That iver ye slep' in a sinthry-box,
Wrapped up in a soldier's cloak.

'Though, on my sowl, Nonie,' he said gravely, 'there was not much
cloak about you. Niver mind, you won't dhress like this ten years to
come. Kiss your friends an' run along to your mother.'

Nonie, set down close to the Married Quarters, nodded with the quiet
obedience of the soldier's child, but, ere she pattered off over the
flagged path, held up her lips to be kissed by the Three Musketeers.
Ortheris wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and swore
sentimentally; Learoyd turned pink; and the two walked away together.
The Yorkshireman lifted up his voice and gave in thunder the chorus of
_The Sentry Box_, while Ortheris piped at his side.

''Bin to a bloomin' sing-song, you two?' said the Artilleryman, who
was taking his cartridge down to the Morning Gun. 'You're over merry
for these dashed days.'

'I bid ye take care o' the brat, said he,
For it comes of a noble race,'

Learoyd bellowed. The voices died out in the swimming-bath.

'Oh, Terence!' I said, dropping into Mulvaney's speech, when we were
alone, 'it's you that have the Tongue!'

He looked at me wearily; his eyes were sunk in his head, and his face
was drawn and white. 'Eyah!' said he; 'I've blandandhered thim through
the night somehow, but can thim that helps others help thimselves?
Answer me that, Sorr!'

And over the bastions of Fort Amara broke the pitiless day.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]

Now first of the foemen of Boh Da Thone
Was Captain O'Neil of the Black Tyrone.
_The Ballad of Boh Da Thone._

[Illustration]

THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT

In the Army List they still stand as 'The Fore and Fit Princess
Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen-Auspach's Merthyr-Tydfilshire Own Royal Loyal
Light Infantry, Regimental District 329A,' but the A