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THE 201st had been a long time at Westerly-on-Sea, and was looking out for a change, when-suddenly-it came.

There were many worse quarters than Westerly, as the regiment would find, to its cost, before very long; for, although it was not a large place, there was plenty of fun and amusement to be got out of it-fishing, shooting, and courting, dancing and lawn-tennis.

To be sure, it was only a town; but it was within six miles of a city-Wraxeter, where there was a grand cathedral, and some fine old canons and fossil clerics with handsome and agreeable daughters. The bishop's palace was only a mile and a half or so out of the town; and the social and trade advantages to be derived from the presence and patronage of the Right Reverend Dr Quodlibet, in the neighbour

VOL. CXLIX.-NO. DCCCCVI.

hood, were appropriated, almost entirely, by Westerly.

It was a stirring place compared to Wraxeter had good shops, sea-air, and soldiers; while its rival-if rival it could be called

had nothing but age to recommend it. Westerly went to Wraxeter just as a young relative visits an old one from whom advantages are to be derived, or as a matter of traditional regard and duty— nothing more. Gaiety was not indulged in at the latter place, or frivolity countenanced there. When the soldiers went on Sundays, with invitations for the fair ones, of the cathedral precincts, they always put up their drags, dogcarts, and tandems at "The Crown," and attended divine service as a means to an end. Even the railway, which had its terminus at Westerly, passed

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Wraxeter by at a respectful dis-
tance; and though there was a
station called Wraxeter Road, the
easiest way to get to Wraxeter
was from Westerly- as you gen-
erally had to walk from Wraxeter
Road, there being no public con-
veyance to the ancient city. The
palace was nearly as old as the
cathedral, and was built, in order
to command a good view of the
sea, long before Westerly existed
or was thought of. It served now
as a connecting-link between trade
and theology-between the shop
and the church. The bishop was
a friendly and popular man, and
gentlemen's seats were numerous
round about.

Notwithstanding that the regi-
ment had been made much of by
the inhabitants of both places, the
declaration of war was a source of
the greatest satisfaction to that
gallant corps-commonly called the
"Do-or-Dies" (alias, "D.D.'s," or
"Divinity boys"); for the simple
but soldierly reason that it stood
first on the roster for foreign
service.

Major Tynte was busy writing, looking into official documents, and arranging about the thousand and one things-regimental and other which an officer on the eve of departure must of necessity have to look to at such a time, when the clanking of a scabbard, and the sound of rapid footsteps coming up the barrack stairs, disturbed him.

The major looked up, his cigar in the corner of his mouth, and the nearest eye closed to keep out the pungent cloud which arose from it.

"Well, Fitz, my boy-how are you?" he said. "Ah! times are changed, and for the worse too, since I was a sub."

"How so?"

a moment! Here's a young pup not yet even fledged

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"I was not aware," retorted Fitz, who knew from experience to whom the flattering noun was meant to apply, "that puppies grew feathers at any stage of their existence, even under the most favourable circumstances."

"Not even Irish ones?" laughed the major; "well, no. I beg your pardon. Permit me to be more exact."

'Oh, of course; please yourself about it-I don't mind."

"Here's a young pup," went on the major, the major, "actually not haired yet, though he goes through the form of a regulation shave three times a-week; who has been gazetted a little over twelve months; who thinks nothing of rushing unceremoniously into the sanctum of one of the strictest disciplinarians in his regiment, and-stop-yes, of actually seating himself uninvited-hanged if he doesn't!—and, I suppose, expects to be offered a cigar into the bargain."

Suiting the action to the word, the major presented the case, and watched his irrepressible visitor spinning a chair on one leg and finally settling down into it, with both his own long ones stretched well out in front, his arms on the back of it, and his chin on his arms.

There hovered a smile on the good-natured features of the speaker, altogether at variance with the words; but the big sub didn't trouble himself to note either the one or the other.

"Give us a light now, major, while you are about it. Never do things by halves. Thanks! It's the nature of the beast, you know; and what can't be cured must be endured."

"Well," responded the major, "By Jove! just you think for resuming his own cigar and his

pen, "I suppose you are right. Il faut hurler avec les loups.'

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Fitz put on a thoughtful expression, going over the quotation in his mind, and ultimately giving it up as a bad job.

'Hang it!" he said, "it is deuced bad form-you must know that, of course to speak in an unknown tongue to a-guest." Here he withdrew the weed from his lips, and calmly contemplated the end of it, while he waited for a reply.

"I was only giving emphasis to your own sentiment about the nature of the beast. A bad example is catching. However, I might have known that you didn't shine in your French at Sandhurst."

'No, faith! Right there-for once. I always found it hard enough to speak my own language," said Fitz, apologetically.

"Which do you call your own -Irish?"

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"Well, no; English, I suppose. "I thought you had cheek enough to say so."

"I mean by courtesy or adoption, of course; if I could only manage to shake off the brogue, I shouldn't make such a bad fist of it. Grammar is quite a secondary consideration, Î find.”

"They don't bother about it at Sandhurst."

"You're always dead nuts on Sandhurst."

"Only Sandhurst could produce Fitzmaurice Bateman of ours. I attribute the present state of the army to its confounded levellingup system, which is the result of pure and unmitigated cram. A young fellow just joined should assume a virtue if he has it not, and show outward respect to his superior officers, even if he doesn't feel it."

"Oh! that be hanged! One

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would think you had got your majority in the year One, instead of its only being the same age as my lieutenancy. I like these airs! You shut up, major. Look here —and he raised his big sledgehammer arm slowly, with the cigar standing straight up between his fingers "if you were to step tomorrow into the shoes-bunions and corns and all—of the old chief, every sub in the regiment would just come over here and congratulate you on promotion, with a hearty slap on the back."

Here he resumed his smoke.

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'Stay where you are-you need not physically illustrate the assertion," said Tynte, observing a sudden movement, which seemed to indicate that he was about to do so; "I can quite imagine the slap on the back-don't mention it."

'Well, you just make the best of it, and don't preach any more. You can't tell how soon the fortune of war may give us the opportunity of testing the truth of my statement."

"I hope the fortune of war will do nothing of the kind, you coldblooded rascal. The supposition involves disaster to too many gallant fellows, to say nothing of the chief himself, who is a tip-top soldier- not the less so because he keeps a tight hand on a young unkempt Kerry colt let loose upon us from the wilds of Ballybog.'

"Oh, I like that!" exclaimed the incorrigible sub, throwing his right leg back again over the chair and changing his position in a way which was indicative of disgustfor somehow there was expression in every movement of this big but not ungainly son of Anak and Hibernia. "You want to be parson as well as major. I'm not supposed to go down on my knees

and worship the old beggar, or pray to him, same as a poor devil of a curate has to do to Bishop Quodlibet."

"Curates don't do anything of the sort. You are getting out of your depth."

"Well, chaplains. I thought that was the orthodox way to make sure of being a rector or a dean or an archdeacon."

"Bosh! You know as little about Church discipline as you do about that of the army, I fear. But, in any case, I can tell you this, that were it not for the Bateman traditions in the regiment, my boy, and the high regard in which the chief holds your father, he would have called you over the coals seriously before now. Take that to heart."

"Oh, I daresay. I'm grateful to the old cock for his forbearance, certainly, and all the rest of it. I'll fight like a black for him when the time comes, and obey orders and all that, and harbour no petty spite, but magnanimously let by gones be bygones. Meanwhile, he may go to blazes! Hang it all! what more can you or he expect?"

"That's your philosophy, is it?" said the major, laughing outright. "There is nothing to be added to it, except the advice to keep the muzzle on as much as possible while there is no legitimate fighting to be done. Lister likes 'varmint dogs' of war, but he likes them well trained-which you are not. 'Down shot,' 'up to heel,' and all that."

"That's all just because I got fast in the commercial traveller fellow at the hotel, I suppose, the night I joined."

"And very nearly had yourself in hot water for the hundredth time," said Tynte. "I'd have put you under arrest, and have walked

into you pretty smartly if I had been your colonel, my sweet infant."

"Oh, stuff! On the contrary, you'd have walked into the second commercial chap, and have lent me a hand if you had been anywhere within reach at all, instead of leaving me to manage two of them single-handed. No use your sermonising. The cap doesn't fit." And Fitz rose, pushed back his chair, and leisurely walked to the open window.

He was physically a fine sample of the young officer. Tynte, who was really warmly attached to the unruly sub, could not but admire the width of his broad shoulders, and had no misgivings as to how Fitz would acquit himself when hand-to-hand fighting had to be done; he was, in fact, every inch a soldier.

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By Jove, major!" said he, looking out, and then speaking back over his shoulder in a half-whisper,

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'I say, here's Garth down below, just come out to contemplate the barrack square, sitting on the window sill in his usual mood, with arms folded and eyes no doubt in a fine frenzy rollingif we could only see them."

Fitz cast about him at once for some missile. The nearest thing to his hand was a small softly bound regulation drill-book in red, belonging to the major, which lay within easy reach; this he instantly appropriated, and leaning cautiously out, took aim, and dropped it on the unoffending head of Captain Garth, knocking that distinguished officer's cap over his eyes, and a small brown cuttypipe-which it had taken some time to colour-out of his mouth at one and the same time. strong expletive from below followed this successful exploit, succeeded in a few seconds by a

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"double" up-stairs on the part of the captain, who, from a point of vantage on the landing, hurled back the drill-book through the open door at the head of Fitz, catching him dexterously on the ear, from which the book rebounded, and falling on the table, upset the ink over some of Tynte's papers.

"I'd have sworn it was you, you untamable savage," said Garth, making a rush towards him.

"Pax! Garth, pax!" shouted Fitz, backing into a corner, and presenting the four legs of an uplifted chair to the enemy. "Swear not at all. Here, look here, Tynte, I'm really very sorry. Let me mop it up. I'm afraid you have done no end of mischief, Garth. What a confoundedly unruly and impulsive chap you are! A fellow can't touch you but you must strike fire."

"The sooner you make it up the better for me," put in Tynte, ruefully, endeavouring to educate the spilt ink with a pen to travel in a particular direction, while he held the bottle at the edge of the table ready to receive it. With that perversity peculiar to spilt ink, it took a sudden turn just when it shouldn't, and spurted out on the major's sleeve.

"Deuced provoking," grinned Fitz; "don't laugh at your superior officer, Garth. The major is rather touchy on that point. Hand him over the blotting paper. That's right; make yourself useful. We were having, before this uncalled-for intrusion, a most interesting discussion on a matter which was growing too deep for the major, and you just broke the continuity of my argument. lost the thread completely." Garth looked up, and so did Tynte, and both laughed.

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"What's amusing you?" in

quired Fitz; "don't keep it all to yourselves."

"It wouldn't require a very abstruse discussion to get you out of your depth, I take it," said Garth.

"Wouldn't it? You say that because, just out of sheer modesty, I have hidden my light under a bushel up to this; but, by Jove! I'll not do it any longer-I mean to come out. You should have heard Tynte and me on the education question-that's all. We got so hot about it, that I had to go to the window for fresh air, and that's how the whole accident came to happen. I was just emphasising an observation, when I let fly the book, and it went the wrong way, just as a crumb of

bread does in a fellow's throat sometimes."

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Exactly! How can you, major, explain such a phenomenon as Fitz? Is he the result of race or climate or genealogy, or all three mixed or what? Why does it exist at all, or to what class or genus does it belong?

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'Oh, I give it up as a hopeless problem. Our knowledge is too limited to get us logically out of such a crux as he. What in the name of goodness is he at now?"

Fitz was doubled up, sitting on his heels, looking into a familiar cupboard in search of the materials for a brandy-and-soda; and having found both, he proceeded coolly to place tumblers for all three, as though he were "at home" in his own quarters. The two looked on not disapprovingly at the proceedings, but insisted on measuring out the spirit to suit their own tastes and constitutions.

"All right! We'll split the soda into three," said Fitz; “I don't like extravagance, even at another man's expense. Talking

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