lly rubbed the place where his
hand had last touched it, and then took from a peg his scarlet tunic
with its white collar, shoulder-straps and facings. Having satisfied
himself that to burnish further its glittering buttons would be to
gild refined gold, he commenced a vigorous brushing--for it was now
his high ambition to "get the stick"--in other words to be dismissed
from guard-duty as reward for being the best-turned-out man on
parade.... As he reached up to his shelf for his gauntlets and
pipe-clay box, Trooper Phelim O'Shaughnessy swaggered over with much
jingle of spur and playfully smote him, netherly, with his cutting
whip.

"What-ho, me bhoy," he roared, "and how's me natty Matty--the natest
foightin' man in E Troop, which is sayin' in all the Dhraghoons, which
is sayin' in all the Arrmy! How's Matty?"

"Extant," replied Dam. "How's Shocky, the biggest liar in the same?"

As he extended his hand it was noticeable that it was much smaller
than the hand of the smaller man to whom it was offered. "Ye'll have
to plug and desthroy the schamin' divvle that strook poor Patsy
Flannigan, Matty," said the Irishman. "Ye must bate the sowl out of
the baste before we go to furrin' parts. Loife is uncertain an' ye
moight never come back to do ut, which the Holy Saints forbid--an' the
Hussars troiumphin' upon our prosprit coorpses. For the hanner an'
glory av all Dhraghoons, of the Ould Seconds, and of me pore
bed-ridden frind, Patsy Flannigan, ye must go an' plug the wicked
scutt, Matty darlint."

"It was Flannigan's fault," replied Dam, daubing pipe-clay on the huge
cuff of a gauntlet which he had drawn on to a weird-looking wooden
hand, sacred to the purposes of glove-drying. "He got beastly drunk
and insulted a better man than himself by insulting his Corps--or
trying to. He called a silly lie after a total stranger and got what
he deserved. He shouldn't seek sorrow if he doesn't want to find it,
and he shouldn't drink liquor he can't carry."

"And the Young Jock beat Patsy when drunk, did he?" murmured
O'Shaughnessy, in tones of awed wonder. "I riverince the man, for
there's few can beat him sober. Knocked Patsy into hospital an' him
foightin' dhrunk! Faith, he must be another Oirish gintleman himself,
indade."

"He's a Scotchman and was middle-weight champion of India last year,"
rejoined Dam, and moistened his block of pipe-clay again in the most
obvious, if least genteel, way.

"Annyhow he's a mere Hussar a