'night guard' catching you every third night and--"

"Oyez! oyez! oyez! you good men of this--"

"Oh, yes! you can come the funny man all right, Mac--you've got a 'staff'
job. Straight duty don't affect you. Why don't they shove me out on
detachment again, and give me another chance to do real police
work? . . . I tell you I'm fed up--properly. . . . I wish I was out of
the blooming Force--I'm not 'wedded' to it, like you."

"'Ear, 'ear!" chimed in Hardy, with a sort of miserable heartiness.
McSporran's contribution was merely a dour Scotch grin. In the moment's
silence that followed a tremendous bawling squall of wind rocked the
building to its very foundations. The back-draught of it sucked open the
door, and, borne upon its wings, the roaring, full-chorused burst of a
popular barrack-room chantey floated up the stairs from the canteen
below--

"_Old King Cole was a merry old soul,
And a merry old soul was he--
He called for his pipe, and he called for his glass,
And he called for his old M.P._"

Outside the blizzard still moaned and howled; every now and then, between
lulls, screeching gusts of sleet beat upon the windows. The parrot,
clinging upside down to the roof of its cage, winked rapidly with
Sphinx-like eyes and inclined its head sideways in an intent listening
attitude.

"Eyah! but th' Force's a bloomin' good home to some of you, all th'