Bobby Wick stormed through the tents of his Company, rallying,
rebuking, mildly, as is consistent with the Regulations, chaffing
the fainthearted; haling the sound into the watery sunlight when
there was a break in the weather, and bidding them be of good
cheer, for their trouble was nearly at an end; scuttling on his
dun pony round the outskirts of the camp and heading back men who,
with the innate perversity of British soldiers, were always
wandering into infected villages, or drinking deeply from rain-
flooded marshes; comforting the panic-stricken with rude speech,
and more than once tending the dying who had no friends - the men
without "townies"; organizing, with banjos and burnt cork, Sing-
songs which should allow the talent of the Regiment full play; and
generally, as he explained, "playing the giddy garden-goat all
round."

"You're worth half a dozen of us, Bobby," said Revere in a moment
of enthusiasm. "How the devil do you keep it up?"

Bobby made no answer, but had Revere looked into the breast-pocket
of his coat he might have seen there a sheaf of badly-written
letters which perhaps accounted for the power that possessed the
boy. A letter came to Bobby every other day. The spelling was not
above reproach, but the sentiments must have been most
satisfactory, for on receipt Bobby's eyes softened marvellously,
and he was wont to fall into a tender abstraction for a while ere,
shaking his cropped head, he charged into his work.

By what power he drew after him the hearts of the roughest, and
the Tail Twisters counted in their ranks some rough diamonds
indeed, was a mystery to both skipper and C. 0., who learned from