d stand what we took from the Bazar-Sergeant's son we'd stand
pretty nigh anything.'

'Which we will,' said Lew, looking tenderly at the ragged and ill-made
housewife that Cris had given him, with a lock of her hair worked into
a sprawling 'L' upon the cover.

'It was the best I could,' she sobbed. 'I wouldn't let mother nor the
Sergeants' tailor 'elp me. Keep it always, Piggy, an' remember I love
you true.'

They marched to the railway station, nine hundred and sixty strong,
and every soul in cantonments turned out to see them go. The drummers
gnashed their teeth at Jakin and Lew marching with the Band, the
married women wept upon the platform, and the Regiment cheered its
noble self black in the face.

'A nice level lot,' said the Colonel to the Second-in-Command as they
watched the first four companies entraining.

'Fit to do anything,' said the Second-in-Command enthusiastically.
'But it seems to me they're a thought too young and tender for the
work in hand. It's bitter cold up at the Front now.'

'They're sound enough,' said the Colonel. 'We must take our chance of
sick casualties.'

So they went northward, ever northward, past droves and droves of
camels, armies of camp followers, and legions of laden mules, the
throng thickening day by day, till with a shriek the train pulled up
at a hopelessly congested junction where six lines of temporary track
accommodated six forty-waggon trains; where whistles blew, Babus
sweated, and Commissariat officers swore from dawn till far into the
night amid the wind-driven chaff of the fodder-bales and the lowing of
a thousand steers.

'Hurry up--you're badly wanted at the Front,' was the message that
greeted the Fore and Aft, and the occupants of the Red Cross carriages
told the same tale.

''Tisn't so much the bloomin' fightin',' gasped a headbound trooper of
Hussars to a knot of admiring Fore and Afts. ''Tisn't so much the
bloomin' fightin', though there's enough o' that. It's the bloomin'
food an' the bloomin' climate. Frost all night 'cept when it hails,
and biling sun all day, and the water stinks fit to knock you down. I
got my 'ead chipped like a egg; I've got pneumonia too, an' my guts is
all out o' order. 'Tain't no bloomin' picnic in those parts, I can
tell you.'

'Wot are the niggers like?' demanded a private.

'There's some prisoners in that train yonder. Go an' look at 'em.
They're the aristocracy o' the country. The common folk are a dashed
sight ug