her cheek forward with a fine air of
indifference, and was duly pecked by Dick, who tramped out of the room
red as fire. That night he dreamed a wild dream. He had won all the
world and brought it to Maisie in a cartridge-box, but she turned it
over with her foot, and, instead of saying 'Thank you,' cried--'Where is
the grass collar you promised for Amomma? Oh, how selfish you are!'

CHAPTER II

Then we brought the lances down, then the bugles blew,
When we went to Kandahar, ridin' two an' two,
Ridin', ridin', ridin', two an' two,
Ta-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra,
All the way to Kandahar, ridin' two an' two.

--Barrack-Room Ballad.

'I'M NOT angry with the British public, but I wish we had a few thousand
of them scattered among these rooks. They wouldn't be in such a hurry
to get at their morning papers then. Can't you imagine the regulation
householder--Lover of Justice, Constant Reader, Paterfamilias, and all
that lot--frizzling on hot gravel?'

'With a blue veil over his head, and his clothes in strips. Has any man
here a needle? I've got a piece of sugar-sack.'

'I'll lend you a packing-needle for six square inches of it then. Both
my knees are worn through.'

'Why not six square acres, while you're about it? But lend me the
needle, and I'll see what I can do with the selvage. I don't think
there's enough to protect my royal body from the cold blast as it is.
What are you doing with that everlasting sketch-book of yours, Dick?'

'Study of our Special Correspondent repairing his wardrobe,' said
Dick, gravely, as the other man kicked off a pair of sorely worn
riding-breeches and began to fit a square of coarse canvas over the most
obvious open space. He grunted disconsolately as the vastness of the
void developed itself.

'Sugar-bags, indeed! Hi! you pilot man there! lend me all the sails for
that whale-boat.'

A fez-crowned head bobbed up in the stern-sheets, divided itself into
exact halves with one flashing grin, and bobbed down again. The man of
the tattered breeches, clad only in a Norfolk jacket and a gray flannel
shirt, went on with his clumsy sewing, while Dick chuckled over the
sketch.

Some twenty whale-boats were nuzzling a sand-bank which was dotted
with English soldiery of half a dozen corps, bathing or washing their
clothes. A heap of boat-rollers, commissariat-boxes, sugar-bags,
and flour- and small-arm-ammunition-cases showed where one of the
whale-boats had been c