was one
troop-sergeant-major, as already stated, who was currently known
throughout the corps as The Pig. A furious and determined attempt was
made upon his life by a man named Lovell, who was sent to a military
convict prison for twelve years, if I remember rightly. Now, I
have never heard of any ordinarily decent officer, commissioned or
non-commissioned, being assaulted by a subordinate; and the civilian
observer of Army life may be assured that, almost without exception,
whenever that kind of thing occurs, petty tyrannies and intermeddlings
on the part of the superior are answerable for it. I met this particular
man on one occasion only. I suppose that I had been pointed out to him
as the young insubordinate who had dared to trespass on tradition by
wearing the clothes served out to him. He stopped me in the middle of
the barrack square at Cahir, and offered me a solemn warning: "You go on
as you've begun, young man, and we'll make life hell to you." I do not
claim that I am in any special sense a lover of justice, but I know
that my gorge rose less at the sense of personal injury, than against a
scheme of organised robbery; but, luckily for myself, I refrained from
answer, and passed on.

Every man had his nickname in the regiment, and I was christened Oxford.
I was on stable sentry duty at some idle high noon of mid-summer, and a
playful chum of mine, whose name was Barlow, laid a little trap for
me. "Oxford," says he, "who do you think is the ugliest beggar in the
regiment?" I answered, without hesitation, "Sergeant So-and-So;"
and Sergeant So-and-So was at that very moment coming--miching
mallecho--through the stables. He heard both the question and the
answer, and he was naturally displeased. From that hour whatever chance
I might have had of a peaceful life in the regiment disappeared.
The non-coms, began to lay plots against me, and I recall one day in
particular, after weeks of rain, during which the horses' legs had been
thickening for want of exercise, we got out into a very muddy menage
with what we called the "young horse ride." I was mounted on a most
unmanageable, untrained beast, and before the work was over he was in a
lather from nose to tail, and I was encased in mud from the spur to the
chrome-yellowed button on the top of my forage cap. It was the custom,
after having unsaddled one's mount, to pass a hasty oil-rag over bit
and bridoon and stirrups, and then to fall to upon the grooming of the
h