’Not a word more, sorr.  Is ut excuses the old man wants?  ’Tis not my way, but he shall have thim.  I’ll tell him I was engaged in financial operations connected wid a church,’ and he flapped his way to cantonments and the cells, singing lustily—­

    ’So they sent a corp’ril’s file,
     And they put me in the gyard-room
     For conduck unbecomin’ of a soldier.’

And when he was lost in the midst of the moonlight we could hear the refrain—­

     Bang upon the big drum, bash upon the cymbals,
     As we go marchin’ along, boys, oh! 
     For although in this campaign
     There’s no whisky nor champagne,
     We’ll keep our spirits goin’ with a song, boys!’

Therewith he surrendered himself to the joyful and almost weeping guard, and was made much of by his fellows.  But to the colonel he said that he had been smitten with sunstroke and had lain insensible on a villager’s cot for untold hours; and between laughter and goodwill the affair was smoothed over, so that he could, next day, teach the new recruits how to ‘Fear God, Honour the Queen, Shoot Straight, and Keep Clean.’

THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD

What did the colonel’s lady think? 
Nobody never knew. 
Somebody asked the sergeant’s wife
An’ she told ’em true. 
When you git to a man in the case
They’re like a row o’ pins,
For the colonel’s lady an’ Judy O’Grady
Are sisters under their skins. 
Barrack-room ballad.

Al day I had followed at the heels of a pursuing army engaged on one of the finest battles that ever camp of exercise beheld.  Thirty thousand troops had by the wisdom of the Government of India been turned loose over a few thousand square miles of country to practise in peace what they would never attempt in war.  Consequently cavalry charged unshaken infantry at the trot.  Infantry captured artillery by frontal attacks delivered in line of quarter columns, and mounted infantry skirmished up to the wheels of an armoured train which carried nothing more deadly than a twenty-five pounder Armstrong, two Nordenfeldts, and a few score volunteers all cased in three-eighths-inch boiler-plate.  Yet it was a very lifelike camp.  Operations did not cease at sundown; nobody knew the country and nobody spared man or horse.  There was unending cavalry scouting and almost unending forced work over broken ground.  The Army of the South had finally pierced the centre of the Army of the North, and was pouring through the gap hot-foot to capture a city of strategic importance.  Its front extended fanwise, the sticks being represented by regiments strung out along the line of route backwards to the divisional transport columns and all the lumber that trails behind an army on the move.  On its right the broken left of the Army of the North was flying in mass, chased by the Southern horse and hammered by the Southern guns till these had been pushed far beyond the limits of their last support.  Then the flying sat down to rest, while the elated commandant of the pursuing force telegraphed that he held all in check and observation.