ommanding the garrison, and Captain Pereira, the Portuguese liaison
officer.

Major Baraquin was a very old soldier. He had seen service--in the
1870 campaign. All strangers, Allies included, inspired him with a
distrust which even his respect for his superiors failed to remove.
When the French War Office ordered him to place his barracks at
the disposal of a British colonel, discipline required him to obey,
but hostile memories inspired him with savage resistance.

"After all, sir," said Aurelle to Parker, "his grandfather was at
Waterloo."

"Are you quite sure," asked the colonel, "that he was not there
himself?"

Above all things, Major Baraquin would never admit that the armies of
other nations might have different habits from his own. That the
British soldier should eat jam and drink tea filled him with generous
indignation.

"The colonel," Aurelle translated, "requests me to ask you ..."

"No, no, _no_," replied Major Baraquin in stentorian tones,
without troubling to listen any further.

"But it will be necessary, sir, for the Portuguese who are going to
land...."

"No, no, _no_, I tell you," Major Baraquin repeated,
resolved upon ignoring demands which he considered subversive
and childish. This refrain was as far as he ever got in his
conversations with Aurelle.

* * * * *

Next day several large British transports arrived, and disgorged upon
the quay thousands of small, black-haired men who gazed mournfully
upon the alien soil. It was snowing, and most of them were seeing
snow for the first time in their lives. They wandered about in the
mud, shivering in their spotted blue cotton uniforms and dreaming, no
doubt, of sunny Alemtejo.

"They'll fight well," said Captain Pereira, "they'll fight well.
Wellington called them his fighting cocks, and Napoleon said his
Portuguese legion made the best troops in the world. But can you
wonder they are sad?"

Each of them had brought with him a pink handkerchief containing his
collection of souvenirs--little reminders of his village, his
people, or his best girl--and when they were told that they could
not take their pink parcels with them to the front, there was a
heart-breaking outcry.

Major Baraquin, with unconscious and sinister humour, had quartered
them in the shambles.

"It would be better----" began Colonel Parker.

"Il vaudrait peut-etre mieux----" Aurelle attempted to translate.

"Vossa Excellencia----" began Captain Pereira.

"No