and cruel stinging reproof!  A well-educated man if not a gentleman.  “Don’t dismount again, Muggins—­or is it Juggins?—­without permission” when some poor fellow comes on his head as his horse (bare of saddle and bridle) refuses at a jump.  “Get up (and SIT BACK) you—­you—­hen, you pierrot, you Aard Vark, you after-thought, you refined entertainer, you pimple, you performing water-rat, you mistake, you byle, you drip, you worm-powder....  What?  You think your leg’s broken?  Well—­you’ve got another, haven’t you?  Get up and break that.  Keep your neck till you get a stripped saddle and no reins....  Don’t embrace the horse like that, you pawn-shop, I can hear it blushing....  Send for the key and get inside it....  Keep those fine feet forward.  Keep them forward (and SIT BACK), Juggins or Muggins, or else take them into the Infantry—­what they were meant for by the look of them.  Now then—­over you go without falling if I have to keep you here all night....  Look at that” (as the poor fellow is thrown across the jump by the cunning brute that knows its rider has neither whip, spurs, saddle nor reins).  “What?  The horse refuse?  One of my horses refuse?  If the man’ll jump, the horse’ll jump. (All of you repeat that after me and don’t forget it.) No.  It’s the man refuses, not the poor horse.  Don’t you know the ancient proverb ’Faint heart ne’er took fair jump’....?  What’s the good of coming here if your heart’s the size of your eye-ball instead of being the size of your fist? Refuse? Put him over it, man. Put him over—­SIT BACK and lift him, and put him over.  I’ll give you a thousand pounds if he refuses me....”

Then the day when poor bullied, baited, nervous Muggins had reached his limit and come to the end of his tether—­or thought he had.  Bumped, banged, bucketed, thrown, sore from head to foot, raw-kneed, laughed at, lashed by the Rough-Riding Sergeant-Major’s cruel tongue, blind and sick with dust and pain and rage, he had at last turned his horse inward from his place in the ride to the centre of the School, and dismounted.

How quaintly the tyrant’s jaw had dropped in sheer astonishment, and how his face had purpled with rage when he realized that his eyes had not deceived him and that the worm had literally turned—­without orders.

Indian, African, and Egyptian service, disappointment, and a bad wife had left Rough-Riding Sergeant-Major Blount with a dangerous temper.

Poor silly Muggins.  He had been Juggins indeed on that occasion, and, as the “ride” halted of its own accord in awed amazement, Dam had longed to tell him so and beg him to return to his place ere worse befell....

“I’ve ’ad enough, you bull-’eaded brute,” shouted poor Muggins, leaving his horse and advancing menacingly upon his (incalculably) superior officer, “an’ fer two damns I’d break yer b——­ jaw, I would.  You ...”