can advance, but few know how to
retreat with a sting in the tail. Then they turned to made roads, most
often under fire, and dismantled some inconvenient mud redoubts. They
were the last corps to be withdrawn when the rubbish of the campaign
was all swept up; and after a month in standing camp, which tries morals
severely, they departed to their own place in column of fours, singing:

"'E's goin' to do without 'em--
Don't want 'em any more;
'E's goin' to do without 'em,
As 'e's often done before.
'E's goin' to be a martyr
On a 'ighly novel plan,
An' all the boys and girls will say,
'Ow! what a nice young man-man-man!
Ow! what a nice young man!'"

There came out a "Gazette" in which Cottar found that he had been
behaving with "courage and coolness and discretion" in all his
capacities; that he had assisted the wounded under fire, and blown in a
gate, also under fire. Net result, his captaincy and a brevet majority,
coupled with the Distinguished Service Order.

As to his wounded, he explained that they were both heavy men, whom
he could lift more easily than any one else. "Otherwise, of course,
I should have sent out one of my men; and, of course, about that gate
business, we were safe the minute we were well under the walls." But
this did not prevent his men from cheering him furiously whenever
they saw him, or the mess from giving him a dinner on the eve of his
departure to England. (A year's leave was among the things he had
"snaffled out of the campaign," I to use his own words.) The doctor, who
had taken quite as much as was good for him, quoted poetry about "a good
blade carving the casques of men," and so on, and everybody told Cottar
that he was an excellent person; but when he rose to make his maiden
speech they shouted so that he was understood to say, "It isn't any use
tryin' to speak with you chaps rottin' me like this. Let's have some
pool."

* * * * *

It is not unpleasant to spend eight-and-twenty days in an easy-going
steamer on warm waters, in the company of a woman who lets you see
that you are head and shoulders superior to the rest of the world, even
though that woman may be, and most often is, ten counted years your
senior. P.O. boats are not lighted with the disgustful particularity of
Atlantic liners. There is mo