sang Capt. MacVeagh and he took up the other trouser leg. Egad, what a
life! Not a sou markee left. Not a thin copper, not a farthing! "Strike me
blind, me wife's confined and I'm a blooming father," sang Capt. MacVeagh,
"For they're hangin' Danny Deever, you can hear the death march play----"

* * * * *

This was the last phalanx. This thing on the ironing board was Horatius at
the bridge holding in check the hordes of false Tarquin. Everything gone
but this. Not even a pair of pants or a smoking coat. Not a blooming thing
left but this--a full-dress suit beginning to shine a bit in the rear.

"The shades of night were falling fast when through an Alpine village
passed"--egad, what a primitive existence. Like an Irunti in the
Australian bush. Telling time by the sun. It must be approachin' six,
thought the captain as his voice trailed off.

Beautiful thought. "Mabel, little Mabel, with her face against the pane,
sits beside the window, looking at the rain." That was Capt. MacVeagh of
the British army, prisoner in a La Salle Street hall bedroom. No clothes
to wear, nothing but the soup and fish. So he must sit and wait till
evening came, till a gentleman could put on his best bib and tucker, and
then--_allons!_ Freshly shaved, pink jowled, swinging his ebony
stick, his pumps gleaming with a new coat of vaseline, off for the British
Officers' Club!

All day long the herculean captain sulked in his tent--an Achilles with a
sliver in his heel. But come evening, come the gentle shades of darkness,
and presto! Like a lily of the field, who spun not nor toiled; like a
knight of the boulevards, this servant of the king leaped forth in all his