e clear
spaces in the sky out of which the stars began to shine keen and clear.
The storm was over by the time when, after two hours of brisk walking,
he had reached his journey's end, and found himself before the long
bleak wall of the cavalry barracks of the great Midland town. He had a
long spell of waiting before him, and seating himself on a hewn stone
at the side of the barrack gate he filled and lit his pipe, and prepared
himself for a game of patience. Once or twice in the course of the long
night a policeman passed him, turned his bull's-eye lantern upon his
face, and went by without questioning, and these events made the only
break in the long monotony of the hours. He had at last fallen either
into a stupor or a doze, when suddenly the notes of a bugle sounding the
_reveille_ startled him to his feet, with its urgent call of

Wake! Wake! Wake!
And wake in a hurry--a hurry--a hurry--a hurry,
And Wake! Wake! Wake!

There began to be a faint stir about the place, like the humming in a
hive the inmates of which have been disturbed, and a little while later
the bugle rang out again, in notes that were destined to become familiar
to his ears.

All you that are able
Come down to the stable,
And water your horses and give 'em some corn.
And if you don't do it
The Colonel shall know it,
And you shall be punished the very next morn.

Soon afterwards the gates were opened, and a man in uniform appeared
with a carbine tucked beneath his arm and began to pace up and down,
just within the great bare barrack square. Polson marched up to him.

'Are you recruiting here?' he asked.

'We are so,' the man answered. 'Do you want to join?'

Polson nodded.

'Better see the Sergeant in the guardroom,' the sentry told him. 'Go
through that door and you will find him there.'

People who read their Dickens, as all men who are privileged to speak
the English language ought to do, will remember a striking little
passage in 'Oliver Twist,' in which the author moralises upon the first
dressing of a new-born pauper baby. Until the faded yellow garments
which have done service for many predecessors are wrapped about it,
the baby might be anybody's child--a Duke's, or a ploughman's. But the
livery of its unfortunate estate marks and stamps it at once and gives
it the social caste and _cachet_ it is doomed to wear. But it is not so
when time has developed character, a