--no pred'lex'n to be called an ass. I'll be
thinking I'm going just to strangle him."

He struck out his bony claws towards the shrinking Doggie; but stout
arms closed round him and a horny hand was clamped over his mouth, and
they got him through the bar and the back parlour into the yard, where
they pumped water on his head. And when the A.P.M. and his satellites
passed by, the quiet of The Whip in Hand was the holy peace of a
nunnery.

Doggie and Mo Shendish and a few other staunch souls got McPhail back
to quarters without much trouble. On parting, the delinquent,
semi-sobered, shook Doggie by the hand and smiled with an air of great
affection.

"I've been verra drunk, laddie. And I've been angry with you for the
first time in my life. But when you knocked the glass out of my hand I
thought you were in danger of losing your good manners in the army.
We'll have many a pow-wow together when you join me out there."

The matter would have drifted out of Doggie's mind as one of no
importance had not the detested appellation by which Phineas hailed
him struck the imagination of his comrades. It filled a long-felt
want, no nickname for Private J. M. Trevor having yet been invented.
Doggie Trevor he was and Doggie Trevor he remained for the rest of his
period of service. He resigned himself to the inevitable. The sting
had gone out of the name through his comrades' ignorance of its
origin. But he loathed it as much as ever; it sounded in his ears an
everlasting reproach.

In spite of the ill turn done in drunkenness, Doggie missed McPhail.
He missed Mo Shendish, his more constant companion, even more. Their
place was in some degree taken, or rather usurped, for it was without
Doggie's volition, by "Taffy" Jones, once clerk to a firm of outside
bookmakers. As Doggie had never seen a racecourse, had never made a
bet, and was entirely ignorant of the names even of famous Derby
winners, Taffy regarded him as an astonishing freak worth the
attention of a student of human nature. He began to cultivate Doggie's
virgin mind by aid of reminiscence, and of such racing news as was to
be found in the _Sportsman_. He was a garrulous person and Doggie a
good listener. To please him Doggie backed horses, through the old
firm, for small sums. The fact of his being a man of large independent
means both he and Phineas (to his credit) had kept a close secret, his
clerkly origin divined and promulgated by Mo Shendish being
unquestionin