came out like a big gruntin' cough, so there must have been many
that was feelin' like me. Oh, but I'm forgettin'! The Fly-by-
Nights was waitin' for their second battalion, an' whin ut came
out, there was the Colonel's horse led at the head - saddle-empty.
The men fair worshipped him, an' he'd died at Au Musjid on the
road down. They waited till the remnint av the battalion was up,
and thin - clane against ordhers, for who wanted that chune that
day? - they wint back to Peshawur slow-time an' tearin' the bowils
out av ivry man that heard, wid 'The Dead March.' Right across our
line they wint, an' ye know their uniforms are as black as the
Sweeps, crawlin' past like the dead, an' the other bands damnin'
them to let be.

"Little they cared. The carpse was wid them, an' they'd ha' taken
ut so through a Coronation. Our ordhers was to go into Peshawur,
an' we wint hot-fut past the Fly-by-Nights, not singin', to lave
that chune behind us. That was how we tuk the road of the other
corps.

"'Twas ringin' in my ears still whin I felt in the bones of me
that Dinah was comin', an' I heard a shout, an' thin I saw a horse
an' a tattoo latherin' down the road, hell to shplit, under women.
I knew - I knew! Wan was the Tyrone Colonel's wife - ould Beeker's
lady - her gray hair flyin' an' her fat round carkiss rowlin' in
the saddle, an' the other was Dinah, that shud ha' been at Pindi.
The Colonel's lady she charged at the head av our column like a
stone wall, an' she all but knocked Beeker off his horse throwin'
her arms round his neck an' blubberin', 'Me bhoy! Me bhoy!' an'
Dinah wheeled left an' came down our flank, an' I let a yell that
had suffered inside av me for months, and - Dinah came. Will I