IV

The Fourth Royal Irish prided themselves particularly, and not without

reason, on the smart and soldierlike aspect of the regiment Recruits

were looked on with a jealous eye, and a gawky or loutish fellow was

received with open disfavour. While we were at Cahir a couple of young

fishermen from the North of Ireland joined. They came in sea-boots,

pilot-cloth trousers, and knitted jerseys; and they were for a while

objects of derision. I dare say one story is remembered in the regiment

still. They were sent into the riding-school before they had had time

to get their regimentals. It is no easy business for any unaccustomed

person to mount a saddled horse without the aid of stirrups, and the

young sailors in their huge sea-boots were at a double disadvantage.

'I can't get aboard this here craft nohow, Captain,' said one of them

to old Barron, the riding drill. I shall never forget his expression of

contempt and scorn as he saw the young men ignominiously hoisted into

the saddle. At the first order to trot the fishermen hung on desperately

to saddle and headstall.

'Jack,' said Barron, wrinkling his red nose in disdain, 'look out, or

you'll be overboard!'

'Not me,' says Jack; 'not so long as the bloomin' riggin' holds.'

The sea-going brethren turned out very smart soldiers later on; but

within a month of their arrival there came about the most hopeless

specimen I can remember to have seen. His name was Sullivan, though he

pronounced it Soolikan, and he was an embodiment of every awkwardness

and stupidity. He was a shambling, flat-footed, weak-kneed,

round-shouldered youth, and the Fourth asked with amazement how on earth

the doctors had been induced to pass him. So far as I remember, he never

learned anything. The various drills laboured at him like galley-slaves,

but never succeeded in teaching him the difference between 'port arms'

and 'carry arms.' When he had been diligently instructed in the sword

exercise, he asked the sergeant what was the use of it all. 'While I was

going through that,' says he, 'some bloody-minded Russian 'd be choppin'

me head off.' It was his idea that a soldier was supposed to go through

the sword exercise in face of the enemy; and the notion that it was

simply intended to give dexterity in the use of the weapon never

occurred to him.

There was never anything in the world more hopeless than the attempt to

teach Soolikan to ride. Of course he was never trusted in the _manège_;

but he tumbled about on the tan of the riding-school in an astonishing

manner, breaking no bones and incurring, somehow or other, no sort of

damage. Every morning the recruits led their horses into the school and

mounted there, and every morning old Barron addressed his _bête noire_

in the same words, 'Pick a soft place, Sullivan.' It was all very well

so long as the ride circled at a walk at the lower end of the school

But then came the order, 'Go large!' and shortly afterwards the long

drawling command, 'Tr-r-o-o-o-t!'

The horses, which were old stagers and knew the words of command far

better than their riders, started at the beginning of the note; and

before the call had well ended the brisk impressive 'Halt!' would snap

across it like a pistol-shot. 'Pick up Sullivan, somebody!' The luckless

man, after more than three months' lessons, came to me one morning in

triumph and told me with a broad grin, 'I didn't fall, off the day,' He

was recognised from the first as incorrigible, and when he had spent but

four months in the regiment he disappeared. It was darkly whispered

in the barrack-rooms that he had been told to go, and that he had been

bribed with a ten-pound note to desert the regiment. I dare not mention

names; but I think I could lay my hand on the gallant officer who went

to this expense for the credit of the corps.

I suppose the School Boards have done much within the last score of

years to minimise the mass of popular ignorance; but in '65 one

found here and there an amazing corner of mental darkness amongst the

rank-and-file of a dandy regiment like the Fourth. There was a great

hulking fellow named Gardiner, who was boasting one day that he could

carry twice his own weight He was told that he could not so much as lift

his own, and was persuaded into a two-handled hamper, in which he made

herculean efforts to lift himself. There was another man who received

with perfect gravity the chaffing statement of a comrade, to the effect

that he had shot a wood-pigeon at the North Pole, and that the bird had

fallen on the needle on the top of the Pole, and had frozen so hard that

it was impossible to remove it.

'Ye know the song,' said the humourist, “True as the needle to the

pole.” There's no gettin' the needle out of the Pole, and now there's no

gettin' the pigeon off the needle.'

The man for whose benefit the narrative was told smoked his pipe

stolidly, and answered, 'Begorra, but it must be cold up there!'

Some of the men had odd ideas about the uses to which learning should

be put. One came to me on a Sunday afternoon bearing a Bible, with a

request that I would find for him and read to him all the indelicate

passages. I met this proposal with so loud a negative, and heaped such

invective on the head of its author, that the corporal of the room, who

was smoking a tranquil pipe outside, came in to find out what was the

matter, and, being satisfied, fell to beating the man about the head

with a boot. From the person thus chastised I heard no more of the

matter; but I learned enough from others to know that my refusal had not

helped to make me popular. There was a tacit sense to the effect that I

was not a friendly fellow--that I was not willing to share the results

of my reading with the less favoured.

At this distance of time I can write dispassionately; but for many years

I had recollections of petty tyrannies which made my blood boil. There

was a lanky youth, four or five months older in the regiment than

myself, who was related to one of the sergeant-majors, and who was, of

course, booked by his relative for promotion. It was never, so far as

I can learn, a part of army etiquette, but it was a common practice at

that time, to steal the belongings of a new arrival, and in that way to

eke out a deficiency in the kit of the plunderer. My valise had not been

served out to me a week before it was denuded of one-half its contents,

and I was reduced to a draft of one penny a day for pocket-money until

such time as the depredations were made good. The sergeant-major's

nephew was found in the act of pipeclaying a pair of gauntlet gloves

which bore my number, and the immediate consequence of this was a

stand-up fight in the riding-school in the presence of some fifty

or sixty of the men and two or three officers who looked on from

the gallery. I came out more than conqueror and recovered the stolen

property; but the lanky young man was made lance-corporal next week, and

it became part of his duty to instruct me in military exercises in which

I was far more proficient than himself. It became a regular habit of his

to keep me at work while the rest of the squad stood at ease, and he had

a vocabulary which, though limited and unoriginal, was as offensive as

can easily be conceived.

He applied to me at last so vile an epithet that, in the heat of

the moment, I forgot that I had a sabre in my hand, and, hitting out

straight from the shoulder, I landed him on the mouth with the guard of

the weapon. This, of course, was flat mutiny, and before I knew where

I was I was seized from behind, the sabre whirled in the air, and I was

lying all abroad with a sprained wrist. Then I was solemnly marched to

the guardroom, and there taken in charge to await an interview with the

colonel in the morning.

One of the men on guard had borrowed from the regimental library a

copy of Charles Reades 'It is Never too Late to Mend,' and I read that

masterpiece all the afternoon and as long into the night as the waning

light would allow. The guard-room bed, with its sloping board and wooden

pillow, made no very luxurious sleeping-place, and I was up at daylight

to finish the most absorbing and enchanting story I had ever, until

then, encountered. The book retains a great portion of its old charm and

power until this day for me, but at that time it shut out everything;

and though, for aught I knew to the contrary, I might be sentenced to

be flogged or shot, I resigned myself to the spell of the story as

completely as if the future had been altogether clear. The colonel was

rather dreadful when the time came, and I remember one axiom which I got

from him in the first three minutes of our interview.

'Well, what have you to say for yourself?'

'The fact is, sir,' I answered, 'this man has been most abominably

insolent.'

'Nonsense,' said the colonel; 'a private can be insolent to his

superior; a superior cannot be insolent to a private.'

I doubt whether the gallant colonel would have felt inclined to sustain

that thesis in the House of Commons, of which assembly he afterwards

became a popular and honoured member; but I dare say it did very well

as an orderly-room apothegm. It had to come out, however, that the

newly-made lance-corporal and I had had a fight a week or so before the

date of his promotion, and that I had come out uppermost. I spoke of the

corporal's language, but declined to repeat it One of the squad, who

was called in evidence, was less particular, and the colonel, in effect,

read the young non-com, a dreadful lesson and committed me to cells for

ten days, giving orders that I was not to be disgraced--by which was

meant that I was not to receive the prison crop which is made to mark

the ordinary turbulent soldier. From that time care was taken that the

lanky youth no longer had me in charge; but we used to scowl at each

other when we passed, and for a year or two after my return to civil

life I cherished a warm hope that I might meet him and repeat in his

society the exercise I had so sweetly relished in the riding-school.

After this episode the crowd was down upon me. It was felt that I had

triumphed, and it was felt that no recruit had a right to triumph

over any officer, however young or however lowly placed. Even a

lance-corporal must be respected, or it was clear that the service was

going to the devil. A brace of sergeants, with whom I had been none too

much of a favourite already, laid themselves out to get me into trouble,

and the plan they adopted was delightfully simple and easy. It is the

rule on retiring from the _manège_ to make the grooming of one's horse

the first duty, though an old soldier will take the precaution on wet or

muddy days to run an oily rag rapidly over the burnished portions of the

horse's fittings in the first instance. This is a labour-saving practice

and is almost universally followed. But I saw one of my enemies with a

sidelong eye upon me, and tackled my horse at once. In two minutes his

confederate was round.

'What the ----' (any competent person who knows barrack life can fill

in the blank) 'do you mean by letting your bridoon and stirrup-irons lie

rusting here? Put 'em in oil at once.'

Number Two, having delivered this order, went away, clothed with curses

as with a garment, and back came Number One.

'Now, what the ---- (break to be filled as before, for these people have

no sense of style or invention) 'do you mean by leaving your horse to

stand and shiver in that beastly lather? A nice bargain the Queen made

when she gave a bob for you!'

This form of insult is traditional, but at first hearing it has power

to gall. The discovery that it is no more than a formula takes off its

edge. Back to the horse, to be again assailed by Number Two for not

having obeyed the order about the bridoon and stirrup-irons. Back to

them, and then the last scene in the comedy, in which, under a charge

of neglecting to groom my horse in spite of repeated warnings, I

was marched straight to the orderly-room, there to appear before the

colonel.

I boiled over in his presence and denounced the little conspiracy.

The colonel was something of a martinet, but he was justice incarnate.

Witnesses were called from the stable; my story was made good; and as I

stood in the ante-room adjusting my forage-cap I heard the beginning of

a tongue-walking which those non-commissioned officers were not likely

to forget.

'If you dare to bully my recruits again,' said the colonel, 'I'll break

the pair of you. I won't have my recruits bullied.'

I smiled at this; but I was not allowed to enjoy a further triumph. The

orderly sergeant wrathfully ordered me away, and I went back to my duty.

From that hour any question of comfort in the regiment was, of course,

over, and it would take a volume to tell the history of the shifts and

dodges which made life unbearable; though, of course, that history would

be worth neither the writing nor the reading. Most of the officers were

invariably kind and considerate; but there was one whom I never forgave

until I learned, years afterwards, that he was dead. It was my habit to

think and believe of him that he was the stupidest person that ever sat

upon the magisterial bench in any capacity, civil or military. A wider

experience of the world has modified that opinion, but he deserves a

place in this record for all that.

He was a pale-faced man, with a slight lisp; and the men despised

him because he had not the nerve even to handle them on church parade

without priming himself beforehand. I had been vaccinated by virtue of a

general order, and in a while my arm became swollen and very painful.

I stuck to duty as long as I could, and at last presented myself on

hospital parade to ask to be excused. The doctor, for some reason, was

absent, and, failing his order, I was compelled to join the ride in the

_manège_. It was a beastly morning, and the field was a mere bog. We

were splashed to the very buttons of our forage-caps, and the horses

were loaded with mud to the flaps of the saddles. I was tired and faint

enough before the ride was over, but my poor beast had to be groomed on

the return to stables, and I must needs set to work upon him. It was all

no good. I might as well have tried to carry him as to groom him, and I

represented my case to a non-commissioned officer, who straightway ran

me in. I passed the night in the guardroom, chilled and wet, and now

and then light-headed. Had I been at head-quarters the colonel would

undoubtedly have sent me to the infirmary, which was the proper place

for me. The lisping captain sent me to the cells.

'Ma-an,' he said, in a drawl which half the regiment used to loathe and

imitate, 'what have you to tha-ay?'

I explained my case, and whilst I did so he read something which lay on

the table before him. When I had done he said, with his finicking lisp,

'Seven days' cells, hard labour.' The old regimental sergeant happened

to be there, and for an instant arrested judgment.

'I beg your pardon, sir, the man is really unfit to perform hard

labour.'

'Then,' said the Solon, 'in that case let him have forty-eight hours'

solitary confinement.'

I ventured as respectfully as I could to protest. I represented that it

was hardly just to punish a man for not performing a heavy physical task

whilst admitting in the very terms of the sentence that he was unfit to

do it. The answer was, 'Right about face, march!' I went to cells. I had

my hair cut, and I spent thirty-six delirious hours alone. At the end

of that time my condition was reported and I was removed; but from

that hour I was sullen and rebellious, and whatever spirit of order and

discipline might have lived in me until then vanished completely.

Only four years ago, on a very memorable occasion in my life, I sat

side by side with one of my old officers. He assured me, with every

appearance of gravity, that if I had stayed much longer I should have

disintegrated the regiment. I was sure, on the other hand, that the

regiment would have disintegrated me; and though I was smart enough and

willing enough to have made a good soldier at the beginning, I was too

angry at stupidity and injustice to care to please anybody any longer.

I knew one man who, having been gently nurtured, found himself suddenly

thrown upon his own resources. He enlisted with a full determination

to rise. When I last heard of him, years ago, he held brevet rank in

another regiment; but I know what slights he endured, to what numberless

insults he submitted, and how harsh and cruel the pathway to success was

made for him at the beginning. They tell me things are better now, and

I hope with all my heart they may be. As I knew the ranks they were

made well-nigh intolerable for any well-educated youngster who showed a

disposition to get on.

V

Thousands of people remember the excitement created five or six years

ago by the story of the Missing Journalist. Scores still cherish the

memory of poor MacNeill and think of him as amongst the cheeriest,

friendliest, and most helpful of men. He was a delightful fellow and

a good fellow; but he had a certain boisterous exaggeration of manner

which sometimes made his friends laugh at him. So far as I know, he

neither had nor deserved an enemy through all his effusive, genial, and

blameless life.

He burst into the Savage Club one day when I happened to be there alone.

He was unusually radiant and assured, and 'At last, at last,' he said,

'I've got my foot on the neck of this big London!' The triumphant phrase

set me thinking at the moment, and has often recalled to me since, the

time when this big London had its foot on me: a thing of the two which

I am afraid is the much more likely to happen in the experience of any

young aspirant to literary honours when he has neither friends nor money

to back him, and no reputation to begin with.

I came to London just after the opening of the Parliamentary session of

1872, at a time when every nook and corner of the journalistic work-room

was filled, and when the doors were besieged, as they always are at such

a season, by scores of outsiders eager for a turn at the good things

going. I forget now precisely how it came about, but I went to live at

a frowsy caravanserai in Bouverie Street, an astonishingly dirty and

disreputable hotel called the 'Sussex.' It is down now, and its site is

occupied by the extended offices of the _Daily News_; but in its day it

was the home of as much shabby gentility as could be found under any one

roof in London. Beds were to be had there at threepence and sixpence.

I remember no arrangement for meals, and certainly never troubled the

establishment in that way myself. The linen had a look of having been

washed in pea-soup and dried in a chimney, and the whole aspect of

the house and its _clientèle_ was wo-begone and neglected to the last

extreme. Paper and pen and ink are cheap enough, and I used to sit all

day long in my bedroom, fireless in the winter weather, wrapped up in an

ulster and with a counterpane about my knees, writing for bare life.

I wrote verses grave and gay, special articles, leading articles, and

leaderettes. These were delivered at all manner of likely and unlikely

places, and came back again, like the curses and the chickens and the

bad penny in the proverbs.

I lived for weeks on hard-rinded rolls and thick chocolate, procured at

an Italian restaurant on the opposite side of Fleet Street, and found

myself admirably healthy on that simple diet. I wrote now and then to

friends in the country, disguising my estate, and telling them what

I was working at without hinting what became of the work when it was

finished. One of my correspondents remonstrated with me for taking up

my quarters in a hotel in that part of London, and advised me to try

cheaper lodgings. Until I had something regular to rely upon, I was

told, it was absurd to launch into an extravagance of that sort. I have

often had to think how many hundreds of men, better equipped for the

intellectual arena than I was, as plucky, as determined, and as full of

hope, have gone down in the lonely and bitter sea of poverty in which

I floated in those days. My breakfast expenditure of threepence, with

a halfpenny to the waiter, secured me a look at the daily papers,

and every morning I went back to that beastly bedroom to write at my

dressing-table in denunciation of the Ministry, or to hold up to public

contumely some unpaid justice of the peace who had given a hungry

labourer six months for stealing twopenny-worth of turnips. I redressed

countless wrongs on paper in that draughty garret; but nothing came of

it There is no use in being too minute in narrating the history of that

time. It was bad enough to begin with, and grew at last to be about as

bad as it could be. That obliging uncle, who becomes your aunt when you

cross the Channel, was useful for a time. But at last there was nothing

more for him to take or for me to offer, and I was alone in London with

a vengeance.

Thousands of well-to-do people endure privation and discomfort every

year for the pure pleasure of it. In my campaigning days I lived on

black bread and onions and dirty water for seven weeks, and topped up

that agreeable record with four days' absolute starvation, But I had a

pocketful of money, though there was nothing to be bought with it, and

I had staunch comrades, and we were marching on with the certainty of

plenty before us. It was all endured easily enough, and now and then

there were outbursts of rollicking jocundity in spite of it The mere

physical suffering of privation is not a thousandth part of its pain.

The sense of loneliness, of defeat, of unmerited neglect; the blind

rebellion against the inequality with which the world's chances are

distributed; the impotent sense of power which finds no outlet--these

are the things which make poverty bitter. But there was nothing else for

it, and I took up _la vie en plein air_.

My favourite chamber in the Hotel of the Beautiful Star during the

hours of darkness was the Thames Embankment. I have passed many years

in London since then, and must have heard the boom of Big Ben and the

monotonous musical chime which precedes it many thousands of times. They

have rarely greeted a conscious ear without bringing back a memory of

the stealing river (all dull shine and deep shadow), the lights on the

spanning bridges, the dim murmur of distant traffic, the shot-tower

glooming up against the sky, the bude-light flaring from the tower of

the Palace of Parliament, the sordid homeless folks huddled together

on the benches, the solemn tramp of the peeler, and the flash of the

bullseye light that awoke the chilled and stiffened sleepers. There is a

certain odour of Thames Embankment which I should recognise anywhere. I

have encountered it often, and it brings back the scene as suddenly and

as vividly as the chimes themselves.

There is plenty of elbow-room in the Hôtel de la Belle Etoile, and there

is water enough; but in other respects the provision it offers is scanty

and comfortless. I spent four days and nights in it, and was on the

borders of despair, when what looked like a mere chance saved me.

Suppose I had not walked down Fleet Street; suppose I had not stopped

to look at the little cork balls in Lipscombe's window, so mournfully

emblematic of my own condition; suppose that the unsuspected

good-hearted friend had not come by and clapped me on the shoulder, what

would have happened? _Quien sabe?_ These are the narrow chances of

life which give one pause sometimes. He came, however, the unsuspected

helpful friend.

It was John Lovel, then manager of the Press Association. I have since

had reason to believe that he deliberately deceived me from the first

moment of our encounter, and that later in the day he was guilty of a

plagiarism. If deceit were always as kindly and guileless, lying would

grow to be the chief of human virtues; and if plagiarism always covered

a jest so generous, the plagiarist would be amongst the most popular men

alive.

Was I busy? he asked. Was I too busy to undertake for him a very

pressing piece of work he had on hand? I made an effort not to seem

quite overborne, and told him that I was entirely at his service. He

said (I suppose it was the first thing he could think of) that to-morrow

was the anniversary of the birthday of Christopher Columbus. He wanted

an article about that event for a country paper and had no time to write

it He wanted no dates, no historic facts, but simply--'a good, rattling,

tarry-breeches, sea-salt column.' The pay was a couple of guineas;

and if I could so far oblige him as to let him have the article that

morning, he could make it money down.

I wrote the article in the reporters' room at the P.A. and sent it in

to the chief. In return I received a pill-box, on the top of which was

written, 'The prescription to be taken immediately.' I found within the

pillbox two sovereigns and two shillings wrapped in cotton-wool, and I

went my way to a square meal with the first money I had ever earned in

London. I found out afterwards that the date was nowhere near that of

Christopher Columbus's birthday; and, so far as I know, the article I

had written was never used. I was telling the story years afterwards,

and somebody informed me that the prescription on top of the pill-box

was Thackeray's. I was quite content to discover that, and I don't think

poor Lovel would have minded it either. He paid the debt of nature some

time ago, and when he left this world had the memory of more than one

good deed to sweeten his parting moments.

I went back to that gruesome hostelry and wrote an article on

'Impecunious Life in London.' It appeared in the _Gentleman's Magazine_,

then published by Messrs. Grant & Co. and under the editorship of my

old friend Richard Gowing. The article was not far from being

autobiographical. I think--but I am not quite sure--that I got sixteen

guineas for it. I know that it set me on my feet, and that since then

any acquaintance I may have had with the Thames Embankment has been

purely voluntary.

Poverty makes a man acquainted with strange bedfellows; and I made one

or two queer acquaintances on the Thames Embankment and acquired a taste

for vagabondising about among the poor which lasted a year or two and

has proved to be of no small service since. Slumming had not become

a fashion at that time of day; but I have never aimed at being in the

fashion, and I did a good deal of it. Through Archibald Forbes's kind

offices, I found an introduction to the _World_ journal, and, at Edmund

Yates's instigation, wrote a series of articles therein under the title

of 'Our Civilisation,' picking up all the quaint and picturesque odds

and ends of humanity I could find in London.

I met many people whom it was very difficult to describe and impossible

to caricature. Amongst them was a street artist who lived in Gee's

Court, off Oxford Street--a worthless, drunken, and pretentious

scoundrel, who seriously believed himself to be the most neglected man

of genius in London. I employed him to repeat what he called his _chief

de hover_ on cardboard, and paid him half a crown for it. He called this

work 'The Guard Ship Attacked.' It represented a Dead Sea of Reckitt's

Blue with two impossible ships wedged tightly into it, each broadside on

to the spectator. From the port-holes of each issued little streaks of

vermilion, and puffs of smoke like pills. The artist gloated over

this work, and was ready to resent criticism of it like another Pietro

Vanucci. He told me he was unappreciated; that he was a man of the

supremest talent, and was kept out of the great theatres, where he could

have shone as a scene-painter, by nothing but the pettiest and shabbiest

jealousies. I don't know where he had picked up the phrase, but he had

something to say about the dissipation of the grey matter of the brain,

and he returned to it fondly as long as I would allow him to talk to

me. His artistic labours and his art invention were dissipating the grey

matter of _his_ brain. All he asked for was a fair field and no favour.

If I would give him three pound ten he could buy an easel, a canvas,

and a set of painting tools, and would at once proceed to show the Royal

Academy what was what I was well to do by this time, but yet not quite

wealthy enough to venture on such an experiment. The most amusing thing

this vagabond said was when he found in my room the painting materials

and sketches of an artistic friend of mine with whom I was chumming at

the time. His nose wrinkled with an infinite disdain as he turned the

sketches over, and he said, with a delightful air of patronage, 'I see,

I see. A brother of the brush.' He brought with him on his journey

from Gee's Court to the north of London an incredible ghoul of a man, a

creature whose face was muffled in a huge beard alive with vermin. He,

it seemed, was another neglected man of genius; but I declined to be

introduced to him. I looked up the artist's address, however, and got to

know his neighbourhood pretty well. Boulter's Rents, in my first novel,

'A Life's Atonement,' were drawn from Gee's Court.

I thought the picture rather like at the time, within limits; but I

never had the heart--or the stomach--to be a realist. Feebly as I dared

to paint it, I had to re-form it in fancy before the book was finished.

The original horror stands there, pretty much unreformed; though I dare

say its walls get a coat or two more whitewash than they did when I was

intimate with them.

I have kept for this place in a rambling record a story which might have

been told in my last paper. When I left the barracks of Ballincollig and

said good-bye to her Majesty's service, I had an encounter with one of

my non-commissioned enemies. I had my leave of absence in my pocket, and

my discharge was to follow me by post I was in civilian dress and was

smoking a cigar at the barrack gates. My enemy saluted before he had had

time to recognise me, and then, seeing to whom he had done this homage,

stood abashed at himself for a minute and then exploded. He could think

of nothing better to say than to order me to put out my cigar. I refused

to obey, for I was yards beyond the magazine limit, within which it was,

of course, forbidden to smoke, and I gave that sergeant a piece of my

mind. One is a good deal more vehement at nineteen than one grows to be

when creeping on towards the fifties, and I made my sergeant a dreadful

promise. I told him that he had acted like an unmitigated brute to me,

and I undertook, if ever I should meet him in civil life, to inflict

upon him a chastisement which should repay us both amply. I never met

him again for thirteen years, and I was slumming when I ran against him.

He was acting as commissionaire at a big manufacturing place in the East

End, and when I accosted him he had no idea of my identity. I wore a

beard and had taken to wearing spectacles, and, if ever I had looked

warlike, had lost that aspect long ago. I asked him if he were

Sergeant ----. He admitted that at once. He had served in the Fourth

Royal Irish?

'Seventeen years, sir; but I don't remember you.'

He had been quartered at Cahir, I reminded him, in the year '65, and

in '66 at Ballincollig. He admitted that quite willingly and seemed

interested. Did he remember a recruit who was nicknamed 'Oxford?' He

thought he remembered that recruit, and paled visibly. He was not the

stalwart fellow he had been, but looked bowed down as if by a premature

old age. I asked him why he had left his regiment.

'Hernia, sir; hernia and pulmonary consumption,'

I had promised this man a hiding thirteen years ago, and thirteen years

ago I am persuaded he had richly merited it, and am quite sure it would

have done him good. It is very likely that at that time I might have

been unable to give it him; but now, between a florid manhood on my side

and hernia and pulmonary consumption on his, the task should have been

easy. But the events of '65-66 looked a long way off in '78; and somehow

it seemed hardly worth while to reveal one's identity. So the sergeant

got half a crown and was left with a bit of a puzzle to occupy his

leisure moments.