e dead beat and
have to fight against the strongest possible inclination to doze even as
you walk about, is really no light trial of fortitude, though it is not
reckoned amongst the hardships of campaigning. But if you are within
sight of your sleeping comrades, and within hearing of their snores, it
becomes doubly exasperating, and might really sour the temper if it were
not for the consolatory reflection that another time _you_ will be the
happy sleeper, and one of the present performers on the nose will be
listening to your efforts to play upon that organ.

It has been whispered that evil men when on sentry have been known to
feel a grim delight in an alarm which has dissipated the slumber of
their comfortable comrades, but we may surely hope that this is
slanderous. However that may be, the slumbers of those who were not
kept awake by the pain of wounds or by duty the night after El Teb were
not disturbed, and next day the main body, after a guard had been left
at the wells, went on to Tokar.

"Do you think they will fight?" asked Green of one of his seniors during
a short halt.

"Sure to," replied the other. "You saw for yourself what determined
demons they are, and it is not likely that they will give up a place
they have only just taken without striking a blow for it."

"Do you think they will fight?" asked Tom Strachan of another, not in
the hearing of the first oracle, who had moved away.

"Not they!" responded the second. "After such a licking as they got
yesterday all the fight will be taken out of them."

"Which shall we believe, Green?" said Tom presently.

"It is very puzzling," replied the inquiring mind. "Suppose we wait and
see before we make up our minds."

"A Daniel come to judgment!" exclaimed Strachan. "A second Daniel! We
_will_ wait."

"Hulloa! There's Charley Halton!" as a smart young cavalry officer
cantered past with a message, having delivered which he came to exchange
greetings with his friends.

One of the most enviable of mortals was Halton, a lad who might be the
model for either painter or poet in search of an ideal hero. Handsome,
strong, active, acquiring proficiency in all games and athletic
exercises almost instinctively, a horseman with the hands of a Chaloner,
and the seat of a Land, endowed with a bright intelligence which seized
the common sense of things, and comprehended the meaning of an order as
well as its literal injunctions, and a happy disposition whic