unconscious way in which the almost gentle blue
eye of his enemy used to settle on him—if
anything, with a kindly leaning towards him. This
the other resented: and felt his lip curling up
with contempt.

But the summit of unreasonable exasperation
was reached, when Mr. Hanbury was seen
riding by with the two young ladies. Captain
Fermor almost raged against this outrage on
decorum. "In Town," he said, "or, indeed,
in any civilised place, it would be screamed at.
Two girls going out with a fellow like that; no
chaperon. It was a pity," he added, with
compassion, "they had no friend to hint to them
what was proper. Any fellow, that at all
approached a gentleman, would not allow them
to compromise themselves like that." And when
the marriage rumour reached him, his scorn and
amazement could not be contained.

There were other characters on these little
provincial boards, invariably to be found on
such occasions: types kept in stock, who will drop
in presently. Such were doctor and doctor's wife;
clergyman and wife; local solicitor in large
business, often flying up to London; and the
landed gentry, whose nearest representative
was Sir Charles Longman, of Longwood. These
threads of different colours crossed and recrossed
each other, and became plaited together into a
sort of dull monotonous strand, which was
Life at Eastport. Life, in fact, oozed on here
pleasantly for some—tranquilly at least for all.
Periodically Sir Charles Longman broke into a
spasm of a dinner out at Longwood, and had an
artillery officer, and an infantry officer with the
parson and the doctor, and a solemn and
impressive ceremonial ensued; when Sir Charles
Longman, tall and well creased in his skin, and
shining as though he had got into a suit of
serpent's skin, peered at every one through a very
glistening eye-glass, as though he were afraid of
mistaking them. His voice came out so aridly,
it seemed to have newly arrived from the
Desert, and dried up all within the area of its
influence like a hot wind. The soldiers went
home loudly execrating host and entertainment,
but Captain Fermor relished both with a smile
of superiority, and said it was refreshing to meet
a gentleman after all.

    CHAPXER III. A MESS DINNER.

THE barracks, which were the vital organs of
the place, and the very centre of its nervous
system, were austere and sour looking. Buildings
constructed as if for the reformation of the
hardened soldiery who resided in them. Like the
men themselves, they seemed to fall into line,
to deploy into galleries, windows, doors, chill-
looking iron-bedsteads, arches, whitewashed
passages, and numbered cell boxes. As there was
properly no flesh and blood in the place to be
taken cognisance of officially by the authorities,
but merely letters and numbers, so the same
system was reasonably extended to the bedsteads,
passages, arches, and even dead walls.

The barracks were on a hill commanding the
town, which had been fashioned irresolutely into
a sort of fort; and when the sun was shining,
little lengths of scarlet ribbon were seen to
unwind themselves on the walls, like a cheerful
edging to a dull grey surtout, attended also by
lively drumming, and the winding of trumpets.
In this sort of clumsily disguised reformatory,
the soldiers took their punishment, were drilled,
snapped at with words of command, and, above
all, "inspected."

Which dreadful operation was now just being
performed. It was a depôt, and samples of several
regiments were here herded together for training
and exercise. Major-General Shortall had been
down, a gaunt, red-cheeked man, with what used
to be termed the mutton-chop whisker, and
who was determined to do his all to save the
service from the destruction to which it was
hurrying—by keeping his upper lip clean and
bare. The men had been scrubbed, pipeclayed,
French polished, burnished, holy-stoned even;
had been reviled and sworn into perfect cleanliness,
before General Shortall was taken down the
ranks.

With a scowl of distrust, as though each
private was busy hiding some breakage or stain,
and might, after all, skilfully evade detection of
his crime, the general walked down by a row of
chests and faces, pried into buttons, twitched open
cartouche-boxes, and pulled at straps sourly,
then walked up past a row of backs, poked,
probed as if he were making a surgical
examination, and finished off a line with an air of
disappointment. Colonels and captains walked
with him in agitation.

In the evening, General Shortall was to dine
with the mess; so, also, was Sir Charles Longman,
the generic territorial person of quality,
and one or two gentlemen. It was a sort of
little festival. The general, in a grudging sort
of fashion, had allowed some commendation to be
wrung from him, in which the words "efficient"
and "soldier-like" were distinguishable. So
there was a weight of care off the minds of the
superior officers.

Like two kings at a conference, Sir Charles
Longman and General Shortall met on the rug,
as at a free town. Colonel Benbow presented
them to each other. The general said he had
known a Longman in "my old regiment" in
Jamaica, and Sir Charles, promptly fixing his
glass in position, and painfully investigating the
general all over, said, doubtfully, "that he—er
—didn't know." They went in to dinner then, in
a sort of clanking procession.

Such splendour as the depôt could compass
was put forward. Two silver soldiers, back to
back, in full marching order, with knapsack and
straps all complete, with the minutest buckle,
exquisitely modelled, had been presented by
Colonel Bolstock, C.B., to his regiment on
leaving; and the two silver soldiers, leaning on
their firelocks, mounted guard at the head of the
table, under the general's eye. The study of the