d----d rocking, Yorkey! . . . Listen now!
we've put up a mighty good scrap against each other--we'll call that a
draw--let's put up another against our--well! we'll call it our rotten
luck . . . D----n it all, old man, we're not 'down an' outs' doing duty
in this outfit--the best military police corps in the world! . . . Let's
both of us quit squalling this eternal 'nobody loves me' stuff! This
isn't any slobbery brotherly love or New Jerusalem business, or anything
like that, either. I'm not a bloomin' missionary!" He qualified that
assertion unnecessarily to prove it. "But let's stick together and back
each other up--just us two and old man Slavin--make it a sort of 'rule of
three.' We can have a deuce of a good time on this detachment
then! . . ."

He spoke hotly, eagerly, with boyish fervour, his soul in his eyes.

Yorke remained silent, with averted eyes. That imploring, wistful,
bruised young countenance was almost more than he could stand. George,
dropping on one knee beside him put a tremulous hand on the senior
constable's shoulder. "What's wrong, Yorkey?" he queried. He shook the
bowed shoulder gently. "What's made you consistently knock every third
buck that's been sent here? 'till they got fed up, and transferred? . . .
They tried to put the wind up me about it at the Post. What's bitin'
you? I don't seem to get your angle at all!"

"Oh, I don't know!" Yorke coughed and spat drearily. "Kind of rum
reason, you'll think. Long story--too long--dates back. Listen then!
Ten years back, in the pride of my giddy youth, I held a Junior Sub's
commission in the ---- Lancers--in India. This is just a synopsis of
my case, mind! . . . Well! the regiment was lying at Rawal Pindi, and--I
guess I kind of ran amuck there--got myself into a rotten
_esclandre_--entirely my own fault I'll admit:

_Man is fire, and Woman is tow,
And the Devil, he comes and begins to blow--_

the same old miserable business the world's fed up with. Since then
seems I've kind of made a mess of things. Burke Slavin's about
right--his estimate of me." He sighed with bitter, gloomy retrospection.
"I've always had a queer, intolerant sort of temperament. If I'd lived
in the days of the Indian Mutiny I guess I'd have been in 'Hodson's
Horse'." (Redmond started, remembering his curious dream.) "He was a
man after my own heart," Yorke continued slowly, "resourceful, slashing
sort of beggar . . . he ruffled it with a hi