emy. I had
had immense success in bewildering this particular warrior a few days
previously: so I went up to him at once:

"My blood-stained veteran," I said, "what has raised your apoplectic
valor?"

I think he was rather ashamed at being caught; but he grumbled out,
sulkily rough, something about--"If they don't keep their ---- heads in,
they'll get more than they ask for." I followed the direction of his
eyes, and there, on the third story, sat two of the quietest-looking
middle-aged women I ever beheld. They were evidently new arrivals, and
had not heard of the injunctions against putting heads out windows: for
they were staring down in blank astonishment, unconscious that the
blatant threats were leveled at them. Now, the ingenious juggler who
packed himself into a bottle, might possibly have succeeded in
infringing the aforesaid rule: no other human being could have got his
cranium through the bars. I suspect, it was simply an outbreak of the
plethoric sentry's irrational ferocity (he had been sweltering under a
burning sun for two hours) on the first helpless object that came across
him; for I could not make out that the women had answered or aggravated
him. I addressed to my friend many compliments on his prowess--trusting
that his soldierly zeal would be appreciated in higher quarters.
Nevertheless, I presumed to suggest that it would have been wiser to
have begun with the baby: if he could frighten that into fits, his rapid
promotion must have been insured. I believed that Brigadier Turchin
would soon want an _aide_, and who knows? &c.

In a few minutes he waxed frightfully wroth; but he had already broken
the non-conversation orders, and I would not allow him to fall back upon
these now. At last he retreated to a part of his beat where I could not
follow him, and there growled and ground his teeth till my time was up.
The corporal who was my immediate guard tried to excuse his comrade,
hinting that "he wasn't quite right in the head." Possibly this may have
been one of his "off-days." The jest of that afternoon was turned into
bloody earnest before three weeks had passed.

Not long after this I had a pleasanter incident to chronicle. As I
entered the yard one day, my guard remarked with a broad grin:
"Somethin' new up there, Colonel."

The indiscriminate appropriation of military titles here, is, of course,
proverbial, though common prudence made me very careful not to claim a
fictitious rank, after lea