To these things, Learoyd, slow to perceive the evidences of sincerity, answered only, ’If owt comes to Mulvaaney ‘long o’ you, I’ll gripple you, clouts or no clouts on your ugly head, an’ I’ll draw t’ throat twistyways, man.  See there now.’

The embassy removed itself, and Dearsley, the battered, laughed alone over his supper that evening.

Three days passed—­a fourth and a fifth.  The week drew to a close and Mulvaney did not return.  He, his royal palanquin, and his six attendants, had vanished into air.  A very large and very tipsy soldier, his feet sticking out of the litter of a reigning princess, is not a thing to travel along the ways without comment.  Yet no man of all the country round had seen any such wonder.  He was, and he was not; and Learoyd suggested the immediate smashment of Dearsley as a sacrifice to his ghost.  Ortheris insisted that all was well, and in the light of past experience his hopes seemed reasonable.

‘When Mulvaney goes up the road,’ said he, ’’e’s like to go a very long ways up, specially when ’e’s so blue drunk as ’e is now.  But what gits me is ‘is not bein’ ‘eard of pullin’ wool off the niggers somewheres about.  That don’t look good.  The drink must ha’ died out in ’im by this, unless ‘e’s broke a bank, an’ then—­Why don’t ’e come back?  ’E didn’t ought to ha’ gone off without us.’

Even Ortheris’s heart sank at the end of the seventh day, for half the regiment were out scouring the country-side, and Learoyd had been forced to fight two men who hinted openly that Mulvaney had deserted.  To do him justice, the colonel laughed at the notion, even when it was put forward by his much-trusted adjutant.

‘Mulvaney would as soon think of deserting as you would,’ said he.  ’No; he’s either fallen into a mischief among the villagers—­and yet that isn’t likely, for he’d blarney himself out of the Pit; or else he is engaged on urgent private affairs—­some stupendous devilment that we shall hear of at mess after it has been the round of the barrack-rooms.  The worst of it is that I shall have to give him twenty-eight days’ confinement at least for being absent without leave, just when I most want him to lick the new batch of recruits into shape.  I never knew a man who could put a polish on young soldiers as quickly as Mulvaney can.  How does he do it?’

‘With blarney and the buckle-end of a belt, sir,’ said the adjutant.  ’He is worth a couple of non-commissioned officers when we are dealing with an Irish draft, and the London lads seem to adore him.  The worst of it is that if he goes to the cells the other two are neither to hold nor to bind till he comes out again.  I believe Ortheris preaches mutiny on those occasions, and I know that the mere presence of Learoyd mourning for Mulvaney kills all the cheerfulness of his room.  The sergeants tell me that he allows no man to laugh when he feels unhappy.  They are a queer gang.’

’For all that, I wish we had a few more of them.  I like a well-conducted regiment, but these pasty-faced, shifty-eyed, mealy-mouthed young slouchers from the depot worry me sometimes with their offensive virtue.  They don’t seem to have backbone enough to do anything but play cards and prowl round the married quarters.  I believe I’d forgive that old villain on the spot if he turned up with any sort of explanation that I could in decency accept.’