Trooper Bear’s brief nap appeared to have revived him wonderfully.

“Let us, like the Hosts of Midian, prowl around this happy Sabbeth eve, my dear,” quoth he to Dam, “and, like wise virgins, up and smite them, when we meet the Red-Caps....  No, I’m getting confused.  It’s they up and smite us, when we’ve nothing to tip them....  I feel I could be virtuous in your company—­since you never offer beer to the (more or less) fatherless and widowed—­and since I’m stony.  How did you work that colossal drunk, Matty, when you came home on a stretcher and the Red-Caps said you ’was the first-classest delirious-trimmings as ever was, aseein’ snakes somethink ’orrible,’ and in no wise to be persuaded ’as ‘ow there wasn’t one underyer bloomin’ foot the ’ole time’.  Oh you teetotallers!”

Dam shuddered and paled.  “Yes, let’s go for as long a walk as we can manage, and get as far from this cursed place as time allows,” he replied.

His hair was still short and horribly hacked from the prison-crop he had had as a preliminary to “168 hours cells,” for “drunk and disorderly”.

“I’ll come too,” announced the Honourable Bertie.

“Yes,” chimed in Trooper Adam Goate, “let’s go and gladden the eyes, if not the hearts of the nurse-maids of Folkestone.”

“Bless their nurse-maidenly hearts,” murmured Trooper Bear.  “One made honourable proposals of marriage to me, quite recently, in return for my catching the runaway hat of her young charge....  Come on.”  And in due course the four derelicts set forth with a uniformity of step and action that corresponded with their uniformity of dress.

“Let’s take the Lower Road,” said Dam, as they reached the western limit of the front at Folkestone.  “I fear we rather contaminate the pure social air of the Upper Road and the fashionable promenade.”

“Where every prospect pleases and only man, in the Queen’s uniform, is vile,” observed Trooper Bear.

Dam remembered afterwards that it was he who sought the quiet Lower Road—­and he had good reason to remember it.  For suddenly, a fashionably dressed and beautiful young girl, sitting alone in a passing private victoria, stood up, called “Stop!  Stop!” to the coachman, and ere the carriage well came to a standstill, sprang out, rushed up to the double file of soldiers, and flung her arms around the neck of the outside one of the front rank.

With a cry of “Oh, Dam!  Oh, Dammy!”—­a cry that mightily scandalized a serious-minded policeman who stood monumentally at the corner—­she kissed him again and again!

Troopers Bear, Goate, and Little, halting not in their stride, glancing not unto the right hand nor unto the left hand, speaking no word, and giving no sign of surprise, marched on in perfect silence, until Trooper Bear observed to the world in general “The lady was not swearing.  His name must be Dam—­short for Damon or Pythias or Iphigenia or something which we may proceed to forget....  Poor old chappie—­no wonder he’s taking to secret drinking. I should drink, myself. Poor chap!” and Trooper Goate, heaving a sympathetic sigh, murmured also “Poor chap!”