ll alone, and can't talk to them either. I've been in the
roughest scrimmages at football and never knew what it was to funk, but
somehow now--I don't know--I've expected to be stuck ever since they
lugged me away two nights ago."

"Oh, they won't do that or they'd have done it before," answered
Elvesdon cheerily, though his cheerfulness was more than half-affected.
"Fact is you've been reading too much William Charles Scully, and Ernest
Glanville, and these other Johnnies who write up the noble savage within
an inch of his life. You've taken an overdose of them and of him.
Here--have some of this _tywala_: I've managed to raise some at last:
the stingy devils began with us on water. That's right. Now fall to."

The boy did so, nothing loath, and soon his spirits revived: he was not
more than twenty-one, and accustomed to a gregarious life, wherefore the
solitary confinement had told upon him.

"Light your pipe," said Elvesdon, when they had done. "We needn't stand
on etiquette now. We're all fellow-prisoners. By George, I've sent a
good many into that condition in course of duty, but never thought to
become a prisoner myself. Funny, isn't it?"

The boy laughed. Elvesdon could see that his first estimate was
correct, that he was a `gentleman ranker' and was not long in drawing
from him, with his usual tact and acumen, all his simple family history.
He was the son of a country vicar, and had had a great ambition towards
the army, but lack of means, as usual, stepped in, and he had turned to
a colonial Mounted Police force as many and many another likewise
circumstanced had done.

"Well Parry, I shall make it my business to see that you don't lose
anything by your behaviour the other day," said Elvesdon, "if my word is
good for anything. You carried out your orders to the letter, and that
as sharp as sharp could be."

The boy flushed up with pleasure.

"Thanks awfully, Mr Elvesdon," he said. "I'd like to get on in the
force. The dear old dad was always rather against my coming out to
join: said it was like enlisting as a private in the Army, and so on--
and that I'd much better try for a clerkship--a lot of good I'd have
been at quill driving! No, I didn't want that sort of life, but I was
going to do for myself so here I am."

"That's quite right," cut in Thornhill. "You're the sort of chap we
want out here, Parry. And even if you don't stick to the force a few
years' training in it'll do you all