Lucille’s next letter was shorter than the first.

  “MY DARLING DAM,

  “Don’t be such a priceless Ass.  Come
  off it.

  “Your own

  “LUCILLE.

  “P.S.—­Write to me properly at once—­or expect
  me on Monday.”

He obeyed, poured out his whole heart in love and thanks and blessings, and persuaded her that the one thing that could increase his misery would be her presence, and swore that he would strain every nerve to appear before her at the earliest possible moment a free man with redeemed name—­provided he could persuade himself he was not a congenital lunatic, an epileptic, a decadent—­could cure himself of his mental disease....

CHAPTER XI.

MORE MYRMIDONS.

The truly busy man cannot be actively and consciously unhappy.  The truly miserable and despondent person is never continuously and actively employed.  Fits of deep depression there may be for the worker when work is impossible, but, unless there be mental and physical illness, sleep is the other anaesthetic, refuge—­and reward.

The Wise thank God for Work and for Sleep—­and pay large premia of the former as Insurance in the latter.

To Damocles de Warrenne—­to whom the name “Trooper Matthewson” now seemed the only one he had ever had—­the craved necessity of life and sanity was work, occupation, mental and physical labour.  He would have blessed the man who sentenced him to commence the digging of a trench ten miles long and a yard deep for morning and evening labour, and to take over all the accounts of each squadron, for employment in the heat of the day.  There was no man in the regiment so indefatigable, so energetic, so persevering, so insatiable of “fatigues,” so willing and anxious to do other people’s duty as well as his own, so restless, so untiring as Trooper Matthewson of E Troop.  For Damocles de Warrenne was in the Land of the Serpent and lived in fear.  He lived in fear and feared to live; he thought of Fear and feared to think.  He turned to work as, but for the memory of Lucille, he would have turned to drink:  he laboured to earn deep dreamless sleep and he dreaded sleep.  Awake, he could drug himself with work; asleep, he was the prey—­the bound, gagged helpless, abject prey—­of the Snake.  The greediest glutton for work in the best working regiment in the world was Trooper Matthewson—­but for him was no promotion.  He was, alas, “unreliable”—­apt to be “drunk and disorderly,” drunk to the point of “seeing snakes” and becoming a weeping, screaming lunatic—­a disgusting spectacle.  And, when brought up for sentence, would solemnly assure the Colonel that he was a total abstainer, and stick to it when “told-off” for adding impudent lying to shameful indulgence and sickening behaviour.  No promotion for that type of waster while Colonel the Earl of A——­ commanded the Queen’s Greys, nor while Captain Daunt commanded the squadron the trooper occasionally disgraced.