nd a change of garb does not work an
actual transformation in the grown man. Polson had purposely chosen the
shabbiest outfit he could find in his whole kit; but he was recognisably
a gentleman at a glance, and as he strode into the guard-room the
Sergeant in charge, who was sitting on the edge of a sloping wooden
bedstead, stood up and saluted him, a fact for which the recruit had to
pay later on.

'You want recruits here?' said Polson, and the Sergeant, finding that
he had been betrayed into a sign of respect for one who was willing to
become his own inferior, answered him with a scowling ill-temper.

'Yes!' he snapped. 'Wait there till the orderly room is opened.'

The young man was too full of his own concerns to take offence at a
tone. He sat down quietly and waited. Uniformed men came and went,
and nobody took heed of him until some two hours had gone by, when the
Sergeant awoke him from his reverie.

'Come this way.'

He followed the Sergeant across the square, and through an open doorway
on the far side of it. The Sergeant turned on him. 'Take your cap off,
and walk into that room.' Polson obeyed again, and found himself in the
presence of a young officer who was bending over a sheaf of papers on a
rough table, pen in hand.

'Man wishes to join, sir,' said the Sergeant.

The officer looked up and rose to his feet with an exclamation.

'Good God, Jervase! What are you doing here?'

'I've come to take the Queen's shilling, Volnay,' Polson answered.

'Why, what's become of the commission?' the other asked. 'Go outside,
Sergeant. I want to have some talk in private with this gentleman.'

Now, chance had played a queer trick here, for it had led the intending
recruit straight to his oldest and closest chum, his old schoolfellow,
and old Oxford comrade. It had not occurred to him to think what
regiment was quartered in Birmingham at that time, and he had walked
straight towards his purpose without a thought of the possibility of
such an encounter as this.

'You ain't serious, old fellow, are you?' asked Captain Volnay.

'Yes,' said Polson, 'I'm quite serious.'

'Sit down,' said Volnay. 'Of course you'll tell me just as much and
just as little as you want to. But before you take a step that you can't
retreat from, you'd better think things over.'

'No,' said Polson, 'I've done all the thinking I have need for, and I've
made up my mind. You'll take me, of course?'

'Look here,' said Volnay, 'you won't