him he would order a special parade so that
they might see him in command of "_his men_, doncherknow!" But his
"high horse" nearly threw him one day when he gave the order, "Move to
the right and fours, form fours!" and not a man moved. Blushing like a
schoolgirl, he called the officers out for consultation and sent for
the commandant. When, however, real men took command there was no
further trouble, though the boys openly voiced their complaints--"that
their leave was restricted for no reason"--"that they were on parade
after hours," and "Why don't they send us away to fight, anyway?
That's what we enlisted for." The announcement that we would be
sailing soon brought forth cheers and every one was in good humor
again. Only let us be sure that we were off to war, and we could stand
even the Puppy's yelping.

But all the same, there were a couple more weeks of the mud and dust to
be endured. I have been in sand-storms in the interior of Australia
when the sun was blotted out and in Egypt when the Kam-seen said to the
mountain, "Be thou removed!" and it was removed in a single night some
fifty miles away, but neither of these is worse than some of the
dust-storms that blow over Melbourne, and at Broadmeadows we got their
full force. We would march in from the parade-ground not being able to
see the man in front of us, and in the light of the candles in our
tents our very features were blotted out and nothing but eyes and teeth
were visible, except that, perhaps, in some faces two small holes would
suggest where the nose might be. It was only after a good deal of
shaking that the place could be discerned where neck emerged from
collar. There were some serious accidents in these dust-storms through
men trying to bump buildings out of their way, and on one occasion two
poor fellows were nearly killed in failing to give the "right-away" to
a couple of sheets of galvanized iron. And when it rained, great
snakes! Where was there ever mud like that! We certainly did a good
deal in mixing the soil of those paddocks, for we would carry an acre
of it from around the tents onto the drill-ground, where we would
carefully scrape it off, and when we marched back we would bring
another acre on our boots to form a hillock at our tent door. If there
had been but an inch of rain we would lift up on the soles of our boots
all the wet earth, uncovering a surface of dust to pepper our evening
meal.

Large sums of money have be