ried mess,
except for the colonel's wife, and Cottar stood in awe of the good lady.
She said "my regiment," and the world knows what that means. None
the less when they wanted her to give away the prizes after a
shooting-match, and she refused because one of the prize-winners was
married to a girl who had made a jest of her behind her broad back, the
mess ordered Cottar to "tackle her," in his best calling-kit. This he
did, simply and laboriously, and she gave way altogether.

"She only wanted to know the facts of the case," he explained. "I just
told her, and she saw at once."

"Ye-es," said the adjutant. "I expect that's what she did. Comin' to the
Fusiliers' dance to-night, Galahad?"

"No, thanks. I've got a fight on with the major." The virtuous
apprentice sat up till midnight in the major's quarters, with a
stop-watch and a pair of compasses, shifting little painted lead-blocks
about a four-inch map.

Then he turned in and slept the sleep of innocence, which is full
of healthy dreams. One peculiarity of his dreams he noticed at the
beginning of his second hot weather. Two or three times a month
they duplicated or ran in series. He would find himself sliding into
dreamland by the same road--a road that ran along a beach near a pile of
brushwood. To the right lay the sea, sometimes at full tide, sometimes
withdrawn to the very horizon; but he knew it for the same sea. By that
road he would travel over a swell of rising ground covered with short,
withered grass, into valleys of wonder and unreason. Beyond the ridge,
which was crowned with some sort of street-lamp, anything was possible;
but up to the lamp it seemed to him that he knew the road as well as he
knew the parade-ground. He learned to look forward to the place; for,
once there, he was sure of a good night's rest, and Indian hot weather
can be rather trying. First, shadowy under closing eyelids, would
come the outline of the brushwood-pile; next the white sand of the
beach-road, almost overhanging the black, changeful sea; then the turn
inland and uphill to the single light. When he was unrestful for any
reason, he would tell himself how he was sure to get there--sure to get
there--if he shut his eyes and surrendered to the drift of things. But
one night after a foolishly hard hour's polo (the thermometer was 94 deg.
in his quarters at ten o'clock), sleep stood away from him altogether,
though he did his best to find the well-known road, the point where t