Then, as a table broke under the furious accompaniment—

‘Mother of all the saints in bliss and all the devils in cinders, where’s my fine new sock widout the heel?’ howled Horse Egan, ransacking everybody’s valise but his own. He was engaged in making up deficiencies of kit preparatory to a campaign, and in that work he steals best who steals last. ‘Ah, Mulcahy, you’re in good time,’ he shouted. ‘We’ve got the route, and we’re off on Thursday for a pic-nic wid the Lancers next door.’

An ambulance orderly appeared with a huge basket full of lint rolls, provided by the forethought of the Queen for such as might need them later on. Horse Egan unrolled his bandage, and flicked it under Mulcahy’s nose, chanting—

‘You know the rest of it, my Irish American-Jew boy. By gad, ye have to fight for the Queen in the inside av a fortnight, my darlin’.’

A roar of laughter interrupted. Mulcahy looked vacantly down the room. Bid a boy defy his father when the pantomime-cab is at the door; or a girl develop a will of her own when her mother is putting the last touches to the first ball-dress; but do not ask an Irish regiment to embark upon mutiny on the eve of a campaign; when it has fraternised with the native regiment that accompanies it, and driven its officers into retirement with ten thousand clamorous questions, and the prisoners dance for joy, and the sick men stand in the open, calling down all known diseases on the head of the doctor, who has certified that they are “medically unfit for active service.” At even the Mavericks might have been mistaken for mutineers by one so unversed in their natures as Mulcahy. At dawn a girls’ school might have learned deportment from them. They knew that their colonel’s hand had closed, and that he who broke that iron discipline would not go to the front: nothing in the world will persuade one of our soldiers when he is ordered to the north on the smallest of affairs, that he is not immediately going gloriously to slay Cossacks and cook his kettles in the palace of the Czar. A few of the younger men mourned for Mulcahy’s beer, because the campaign was to be conducted on strict temperance principles, but as Dan and Horse Egan said sternly, ‘We’ve got the beer-man with us. He shall drink now on his own hook.’

Mulcahy had not taken into account the possibility of being sent on active service. He had made up his mind that he would not go under any circumstances, but fortune was against him.

‘Sick—you?’ said the doctor, who had served an unholy apprenticeship to his trade in Tralee poorhouses. ‘You’re only home-sick, and what you call varicose veins come from over-eating. A little gentle exercise will cure that.’ And later, ‘Mulcahy, my man, everybody is allowed to apply for a sick-certificate once. If he tries it twice we call him by an ugly name. Go back to your duty, and let’s hear no more of your diseases.’

I am ashamed to say that Horse Egan enjoyed the study of Mulcahy’s soul in those days, and Dan took an equal interest. Together they would communicate to their corporal all the dark lore of death which is the portion of those who have seen men die. Egan had the larger experience, but Dan the finer imagination. Mulcahy shivered when the former spoke of the knife as an intimate acquaintance, or the latter dwelt with loving particularly on the fate of those who, wounded and helpless, had been overlooked by the ambulances, and had fallen into the hands of the Afghan women-folk.

Mulcahy knew that the mutiny, for the present at least, was dead, knew, too, that a change had come over Dan’s usually respectful attitude towards him, and Horse Egan’s laughter and frequent allusions to abortive conspiracies emphasised all that the conspirator had guessed. The horrible fascination of the