Discipline for soul and body?  The finest thing in all the world—­in reason.  But the discipline of the tram-horse, of the blinded bullock at the wheel, of the well-camel, of the galley-slave—­meticulous, puerile, unending, unchanging, impossible ...?  Necessary perhaps, once upon a time—­but hard on the man of brains, sensibility, heart, and individuality.

Soul and body?  Deadly for the soul—­and fairly dangerous for the body in the Cavalry Regiment whose riding-master prefers the abominable stripped-saddle training to the bare-backed....

Dam yawned and looked at the tin clock on the shelf above the cot of the Room Corporal.  Half an hour yet....  Did time drag more heavily anywhere in the world?...

His mind roamed back over his brief, age-long life in the Queen’s Greys and passed it in review.

The interview with the Doctor, the Regimental Sergeant-Major, the Adjutant, the Colonel—­the Oath on the Bible before that dread Superman....  How well he remembered his brief exordium—­“Obey your Superiors blindly; serve your Queen, Country, and Regiment to the best of your ability; keep clean, don’t drink, fear God, and—­most important of all—­take care of your horse. Take care of your horse, d’ye hear?”

Also the drawled remark of the Adjutant afterwards, “Ah—­what—­ah—­University?”—­his own prompt reply of “Whitechapel, sir,” and the Adjutant’s approving “Exactly....  You’ll get on here by good conduct, good riding, and good drill—­not by—­ah—­good accent or anything else.”

How well he remembered the strange depolarized feeling consequent upon realizing that his whole worldly possessions consisted in three “grey-back” shirts, two pairs of cotton pants, two pairs of woollen socks, a towel; a hold-all containing razor, shaving-brush, spoon, knife and fork, and a button-stick; a cylindrical valise with hair-brush, clothes-brush, brass-brush, and boot-brushes; a whip, burnisher, and dandy-brush (all three, for some reason, to be paid for as part of a “free” kit); jack-boots and jack-spurs, wellington-boots and swan-neck box-spurs, ammunition boots; a tin of blacking and another of plate powder; blue, white-striped riding-breeches, blue, white-striped overalls, drill-suit of blue serge, scarlet tunic, scarlet stable-jacket, scarlet drill “frock,” a pair of trousers of lamentable cut “authorized for grooming,” brass helmet with black horse-hair plume, blue pill-box cap with white stripe and button, gauntlets and gloves, sword-belt and pouch-belt, a carbine and a sword.  Also of a daily income of one loaf, butter, tea, and a pound of meat (often uneatable), and the sum of one shilling and twopence subject to a deduction of threepence a day “mess-fund,” fourpence a month for delft, and divers others for library, washing, hair-cutting, barrack-damages, etc.

Yes, it had given one a strange feeling of nakedness, and yet of a freedom from the tyranny of things, to find oneself so meagrely and yet so sufficiently endowed.