for a few days, but he had
an English cat-like attachment for his old house, and despite the
abundance of game, Pinkie soon stole away to his old master's
quarters, three miles off. More than once the men brought him back to
me, but the attractions of Spring Hill were never strong enough to
detain him long with me.

From the human thieves that surrounded Spring Hill I had to stand as
sharp a siege as the Russians had in that poor city against which we
heard the guns thundering daily; while the most cunning and desperate
sorties were often made upon the most exposed parts of my defences,
and sometimes with success. Scores of the keenest eyes and hundreds of
the sharpest fingers in the world were always ready to take advantage
of the least oversight. I had to keep two boys, whose chief occupation
was to watch the officers' horses, tied up to the doorposts of the
British Hotel. Before I adopted this safeguard, more than one officer
would leave his horse for a few minutes, and on his return find it
gone to the neighbourhood of the Naval Brigade, or the horse-fair at
Kamiesch. My old friends, the Zouaves, soon found me out at Spring
Hill, and the wiry, light-fingered, fighting-loving gentry spent much
of their leisure there. Those confounded trowsers of theirs offered
conveniences of stowage-room which they made rare use of. Nothing was
too small, and few things too unwieldy, to ride in them; like the
pockets of clown in a pantomime, they could accommodate a well-grown
baby or a pound of sausages equally well. I have a firm conviction
that they stuffed turkeys, geese, and fowls into them, and I
positively know that my only respectable teapot travelled off in the
same conveyance, while I detected one little fellow, who had tied them
down tight at his ankles, stowing away some pounds of tea and coffee
mixed. Some officers, who were present, cut the cords, and, holding up
the little scamp by the neck, shook his trowsers empty amid shouts of
laughter.

Our live stock, from the horses and mules down to the geese and fowls,
suffered terribly. Although we kept a sharp look-out by day, and paid
a man five shillings a night as watchman, our losses were very great.
During the time we were in the Crimea we lost over a score of horses,
four mules, eighty goats, many sheep, pigs, and poultry, by thieving
alone. We missed in a single night forty goats and seven sheep, and on
Mr. Day's going to head-quarters with intelligence of the disa