hour av the day an' the night, an' he withered like beef rations
in a hot sun, an' his eyes was like owls' eyes, an' his hands was
mut'nous.

"They was gettin' the rig'mints away wan by wan, the campaign
bein' inded, but as ushuil they was behavin' as if niver a
rig'mint had been moved before in the mem'ry av man. Now, fwhy is
that, Sorr? There's fightin' in an' out nine months av the twelve
somewhere in the Army. There has been - for years an' years an'
years, an' I wud ha' thought they'd begin to get the hang av
providin' for throops. But no! Ivry time it's like a girls' school
meetin' a big red bull whin they're goin' to church; an' 'Mother
av God,' sez the Commissariat an' the railways an' the Barrick-
masters, 'fwhat will we do now?' The ordhers came to us av the
Tyrone an' the Ould Rig'mint an' half a dozen more to go down, and
there the ordhers stopped dumb. We wint down, by the special grace
av God - down the Khaiber anyways. There was sick wid us, an' I'm
thinkin' that some av them was jolted to death in the doolies, but
they was anxious to be kilt so if they cud get to Peshawur alive
the sooner. I walked by Love-o'-Women - there was no marchin', an'
Love-o'-Women was not in a stew to get on. 'If I'd only ha' died
up there!' sez he through the doolie-curtains, an' then he'd twist
up his eyes an' duck his head for the thoughts that came to him.

"Dinah was in Depot at Pindi, but I wint circumspectuous, for well
I knew 'tis just at the rump-ind av all things that his luck turns
on a man. By token I ad seen a dhriver of a batthery goin' by at a
trot singin' 'Home, swate home' at the top av his shout, and
takin' no heed o his bridle-hand - I had seen that man dhrop under
the gun in the middle of a word, and come out by the limber like -