The men, full fed, turned to tobacco and song,—­their officers with them.  The subaltern is happy who can win the approval of the musical critics in his regiment, and is honoured among the more intricate step-dancers.  By him, as by him who plays cricket cleverly, Thomas Atkins will stand in time of need, when he will let a better officer go on alone.  The ruined tombs of forgotten Mussulman saints heard the ballad of Agra Town, The Buffalo Battery, Marching to Kabul, The long, long Indian Day, The Place where the Punkah-coolie died, and that crashing chorus which announces,

     Youth’s daring spirit, manhood’s fire,
       Firm hand and eagle eye,
     Must he acquire who would aspire
       To see the gray boar die.

To-day, of all those jovial thieves who appropriated my commissariat and lay and laughed round that water-proof sheet, not one remains.  They went to camps that were not of exercise and battles without umpires.  Burmah, the Soudan, and the frontier,—­fever and fight,—­took them in their time.

I drifted across to the men’s fires in search of Mulvaney, whom I found strategically greasing his feet by the blaze.  There is nothing particularly lovely in the sight of a private thus engaged after a long day’s march, but when you reflect on the exact proportion of the ’might, majesty, dominion, and power’ of the British Empire which stands on those feet you take an interest in the proceedings.

‘There’s a blister, bad luck to ut, on the heel,’ said Mulvaney.  ’I can’t touch ut.  Prick ut out, little man.’

Ortheris took out his house-wife, eased the trouble with a needle, stabbed Mulvaney in the calf with the same weapon, and was swiftly kicked into the fire.

‘I’ve bruk the best av my toes over you, ye grinnin’ child av disruption,’ said Mulvaney, sitting cross-legged and nursing his feet; then seeing me, ‘Oh, ut’s you, sorr!  Be welkim, an’ take that maraudin’ scutt’s place.  Jock, hold him down on the cindhers for a bit.’

But Ortheris escaped and went elsewhere, as I took possession of the hollow he had scraped for himself and lined with his greatcoat.  Learoyd on the other side of the fire grinned affably and in a minute fell fast asleep.

‘There’s the height av politeness for you,’ said Mulvaney, lighting his pipe with a flaming branch.  ’But Jock’s eaten half a box av your sardines at wan gulp, an’ I think the tin too.  What’s the best wid you, sorr, an’ how did you happen to be on the losin’ side this day whin we captured you?’

‘The Army of the South is winning all along the line,’ I said.

‘Then that line’s the hangman’s rope, savin’ your presence.  You’ll learn to-morrow how we rethreated to dhraw thim on before we made thim trouble, an’ that’s what a woman does.  By the same tokin, we’ll be attacked before the dawnin’ an’ ut would be betther not to slip your boots.  How do I know that?  By the light av pure reason.