h, for the sake of
morale, must make the soldiers, whose blood is wanted to be like fire
on the field, patient, pulseless, and enduring of every provocation,
cruelty, and insolence in the camp and barrack, as though they were
statues of stone--a needful law, a wise law, an indispensable law,
doubtless, but a very hard law to be obeyed by a man full of life and
all life's passions.

At the court-martial on his mutinous conduct, which followed, many
witnesses brought evidence, on being pressed, to the unpopularity of
Warne in the regiment and to his harshness and his tyranny to Rake. Many
men spoke out what had been chained down in their thoughts for years;
and, in consideration of the provocation received, the prisoner, who was
much liked by the officers, was condemned to six months' imprisonment
for his insubordination and blow to his superior officer, without being
tied up to the triangles. At the court-martial, Cecil, who chanced to
be in Brighton after Goodwood, was present one day with some
other Guardsmen; and the look of Rake, with his cheerfulness under
difficulties, his love for the hound, and his bright, sunburnt, shrewd,
humorous countenance, took his fancy.

"Beauty" was the essence of good nature. Indolent himself, he hated to
see anything or anybody worried; lazy, gentle, wayward, and spoilt
by his own world, he was still never so selfish and philosophic as he
pretended but what he would do a kindness, if one came in his way; it is
not a very great virtue, perhaps, but it is a rare one.

"Poor devil! Struck the other because he wouldn't have his dog hanged.
Well, on my word, I should have done the same in his place, if I could
have got up the pace for so much exertion," murmured Cecil to his
cheroot, careless of the demoralizing tendency of his remarks for the
army in general. Had it occurred in the Guards, and he had "sat" on the
case, Rake would have had one very lenient judge.

As it was, Bertie actually went the lengths of thinking seriously about
the matter; he liked Rake's devotion to his dumb friend, and he heard of
his intense popularity in his troop; he wished to save, if he could, so
fine a fellow from the risks of his turbulent passion and from the stern
fetters of a trying discipline; hence, when Rake found himself condemned
to his cell, he had a message sent him by Bertie's groom that, when his
term of punishment should be over, Mr. Cecil would buy his discharge
from the service and engage