his perilous adventures.  Who can help wishing
that this poor warrior may not be doomed to
eightpence a day for life?  But he has had no
schooling, and cannot write out even an absent
report, far less calculate the mysterious
hieroglyphics of a ration return.  Ignorant and
drunken, what can be hoped for him?

Recruit, who seeks to understand the
mysterious process of "heelballing" a pouch,
stands watching that operation with a
wistfulness which is delightful to behold.  The
seasoned hero of five medals proceeds
composedly to sharpen the edge of this young
man's curiosity.  Recruit indicates dubiously
that he has got "tup-pence 'a-penny," and
rattles the same in his trousers pocket.  Old
Soldier discovers the fact that he has just
"three-'a-pence" in an old jacket on the shelf.  A
solemn compact is made between these worthies
that they shall crack a pot; the pot is cracked
accordingly at the bar of the canteen, in alternate
swigs—Old Soldier taking all the odd ones down
to the last, which he disposes of with reluctance
and subdued gratification.  Recruit returns
under the wing of his Mentor, who has the
deliberate cogitative stride of the old toper.
Recruit has been a "navvy" who, when
top-heavy takes up an unconscionable quantity of
road in the nautical way of tacking, but on the
minor half of a pot he can do no more than
lurch fitfully.  Recruit essays pouch-balling as
an experiment; but fails to penetrate the
mystery.  Old Soldier explains.  I have seen men
let off the steam of their wrath through a
severe course of pouch-balling, or pipe-claying,
silent and absorbed, as if their existence were
at stake. The process has a powerful sedative
effect on the system, and is a valuable remedy
for mental depression if an old strong-flavoured
black pipe be taken along with it.  Heelball is
made in this wise: I reveal a secret, once
strictly guarded, because vigorous martinets
have resolved to put down Heelball even at the
expense of smartness, and have ruthlessly
ordained the use of common blacking.

Heelball is made in this wise.  Experienced
old soldier watches carefully for a knuckle-bone,
and, after reducing it to a fine white ash in the
fire, mixes it with melted beeswax and ground
indigo, into a stiff paste, which is then kneaded
into little lumps and sold to recruits as
precious.  Old Soldier now present is one of the
last of the race of heelballers.

Butts sleeps in the next cot to Heelball, and
years ago, when he joined the depôt, modelled
himself upon that warrior.  That was before
the Crimean War, he has since been in China,
and is now a convalescent invalid, who was
transformed into an officer's servant because he
has some glimmering sense of polite existence,
picked up in former days, when he was groom
to a country squire in his native village.  Butts
dresses tastefully, at his master's expense, in
dark tweed, and has a faint odour of civilian
about him, corrected by a distant air of barrack-room
brassball and pipeclay.

When Letter Bugle sounds, Butts anticipates
the orderly corporal, whose duty it is to receive
the letters of the company from the post-sergeant,
and struts by Barrack-Room, flaunting
in the eyes of inquisitive comrades, ominous
official despatches On Her Majesty's Service,
addressed to the Captain Commanding the
Eleventh Depôt; or less official pink billets in
Italian spider hands to Captain Swordknot, at
the barracks.  At such times, speculation
confines itself chiefly to the well-filled
War-Office or Horse-Guards letters; Old Soldier
having an acute feeling of route to
somewhere (it doesn't matter to him where) and
revolving in his mind vaguely, the possibility
of being warned for the baggage guard—
a glorious mode of military progression,
involving frequent halts at half-way houses to
liquor up the exhausted party, who take turn
also, when clear of a town, to ride at ease
on the waggon.  Having exhibited the
outsides of the letters, Butts proceeds to deliver
them to his master, and make out a précis
of their purport from that gentleman's
physiognomy.  Butts served at the officers' mess
three times a week in all the glory of plush and
silk stockings. His master, Captain Swordknot,
presides over the lesser failings of his depôt,
and as a rule refers all victims of the effects of
canteen fourpenny, to the dread tribunal of the
Colonel, a great chief who wields the sword of
justice like a Chinese executioner.  Butts was
lately caught overladen with fourpenny, and
Swordknot remorselessly sent him up to the
high seat of judgment.  There, he was
sentenced to ten days' pack drill and fourteen days'
confinement to barracks, besides lapsing into a
state of ignominous heelball and pipeclay.  Butts
having been thus stripped of his plumage, Old
Soldier and he have become chums, and deliver
law to the recruits on all points of barrack-room
economy.

Cropper is our sergeant.  He is an old stamp
of sergeant; one who fought in the Sutlej
campaign, and in every other campaign of later
date; yet he is straight and smart to-day,
more clean, prim, and methodical, than any
other man in the regiment, be he young or old.
Cropper will never be a colour sergeant or troop
sergeant major, as the cavalry term a relative
rank, because he has a horror of accounts, and of
the handling of other men's money.  He prefers
to die in harness, if need be, as a good old duty
sergeant to the last.  He has never married,
and is after his fashion a spruce exact bachelor,
careful in all things, and especially particular as
to his outward appearance.  Yet this poor
barrack bachelor has a warm heart under his
crust of discipline.  I thoroughly respect our
sergeant, and delight to watch the play of his
stern features in a time of conflicting duties.
He has a broad high forehead, which would
indicate a capacity for something better than his
calling, if it were not for his defective early
education.  He has sharply defined eyebrows, and
a thin well-formed aquiline nose denoting great
sagacity; but his sagacity has all been exercised
on trifles of routine.  He has a hard thin