his old captain's hand and hurried down-stairs, leaving
him with a ball in his throat and moisture very near his eyes.

"Thank goodness that is over!" he murmured, as he left the Temple. "Now
for the barracks."

Instead of offering himself to one of the outside recruiters, he went
straight to the Orderly Room, and told a sergeant waiting outside that
he wished to join. So he was brought before the Adjutant almost at
once. He stood six feet in his stockings, and measured forty-one inches
round the chest, so there was no difficulty about his acceptance. They
jumped at him like a trout at a May fly.

He gave his real name, Reginald Kavanagh. "If I were ashamed of what I
am doing, I would not do it," he reasoned. And besides, he wished to be
traced with the greatest possible ease should the missing will be found.

Of course the life at first was extremely hard, and the companionship of
some of his comrades very distasteful to him, but he took care not to
show it. And others were as good fellows as ever stepped, and with them
he made friends.

The fact of his knowing his drill thoroughly made matters easier for
him, and he soon learned how to clean his arms and accoutrements, make
his bed, and so forth. And by dint of unhesitating obedience to orders,
even when foolish, and never answering or arguing with superiors, he got
a good name without subserviency.

CHAPTER NINE.

THE ARMY OF HICKS PASHA.

It may have seemed to you that Harry Forsyth took the death of the
Egyptian soldier rather callously, seeing that he was not used to such
scenes, and that he ought to have been a little more impressed. But you
see he had resided in Egypt, and been some way up the Nile before; and
in hot countries people not only live a good deal, but die a good deal,
in the open air, so that he had seen human bodies; and more than once,
in the course of his journeys, he had come upon one such lying much as
you will see that of a dog on the mud of a tidal river at home at low
water.

It is astonishing how soon we grow hardened to such spectacles. And
then, unless he has become exceptionally cosmopolitan, a Briton finds it
very difficult to reckon an African, or even an Asiatic, as _quite_ a
human being. Of course he knows that he is so, just as much as himself.
He knows, and perhaps vehemently asserts, if necessary, that even the
lowest type of negro is a man and a brother, and not a connecting link
between man and monkey.