"It shall be the day after," said the strange
lady.

"The day after to-morrow, then," said
Vampi.

MILITARY PUNISHMENTS.

As an old non-commissioned officer of twenty-
five years' service, I may be allowed to say my
say respecting military punishments in the
English army. I have gone through the ordeal
of barrack-room life, and know what it is to be
punished as well as rewarded in the army.
Nor am I ignorant as to what produces the
more serious crimes we read of being committed
in the army. When Major de Vere was
murdered the other day, there was hardly a man or
woman in all England that was not horrified at
reading the details of this fearful crime in the
papers. In common justice to the soldiers of
the army, I must say that the indignation of the
rank and file throughout the empire was quite
equal to that of any other class. In every
regiment, every troop, and every company, the
fearful crime which Currie had committed was
loudly expressed and sincerely felt by the
soldiers of even the humblest rank. It cannot
be denied that every corps in the service
contains many thoughtless, careless, drunken,
and vicious men. Considering the class from
which our army is chiefly recruited, this cannot
be wondered at. But it is one thing to
be a loose, or even bad, soldier, and another
to be a murderer. Men may grumble at the
discipline of the regiment; complain of the
never ending routine of duty; be annoyed, and
even angry, at the way in which they are
occasionally spoken to by some few officers, who seem
to think that it is impossible to maintain their
power over men unless they address them like
dogs. But to dip one's hands in blood — to murder
an officer coolly and deliberately as private
Currie did in Brompton barracks — is a crime of
which, thank God, there are but very few men
even amongst the very worst of our worst
soldiers would contemplate for a moment.

Still it cannot be denied but that the serious
military offence of striking non-commissioned
officers, and even occasionally of attempting the
lives of superiors, is becoming more common
than it was in the English army. Formerly, even
the comparatively trivial offence of wilful direct
disobedience of orders was rare in the service,
but now it is daily getting more prevalent. Bad
conduct in a regiment, troop, or company, does
not, however, spread like the cattle disease in a
herd of bullocks. When soldiers have passed
through their drill, they generally take their
stand for good or bad amongst their companions.
In every barrack-room there are the really good
soldiers who take a pride in their work, and
like to be as smart as possible in their duty.
Then, again, there are what I may call the
medium soldiers, men who are neither very
good nor extremely bad, and who get over
their work with a certain amount of grumbling,
although they still do get through it. Lastly,
there are the men who are altogether bad, whose
names are seldom out of the defaulters' book, and
who, whenever they have a little money in their
pockets, invariably get drunk. Of these there
is a degree worse still: the sullen bad violent
men: soldiers who have, or believe themselves to
have, a grievance against the whole army in
general, and against their own officers in
particular. These are few in number, but it is from
among the few that our military prisons are filled,
and, when serious crime is committed, the
criminals are always from the ranks of this
particular class.

How is it that, with so few incentives to bad
behaviour, and so many inducements to good
conduct, there are soldiers given to violent
crimes? I attribute most of this evil to the
military punishments we have in the English
army. When a soldier commits himself
seriously, for the first time even, his punishment
is invariably one which so degrades him, in the
eyes of both himself and his comrades, that he
does not care, and does not try, ever to redeem his
character. And when he advances in crime—
when he gets so hardened as almost to glory in
the very shame of what he knows to be wrong
—the penalty he has to pay for his offences
serves to strengthen still more his evil resolves,
and causes him to walk, as it were, in military
disgrace for the rest of his days.

Let me relate a case in point. I have
served in several regiments. One of them was
a very crack hussar regiment, which was
stationed for twelve months and more at Hounslow,
near London. I was troop sergeant-major
of E troop in that corps. In the same troop
vas a young fellow named Vincent, who had
enlisted about a year previously, when we
were quartered at Manchester. Vincent was
a fine young soldier, and a good-hearted lad
as ever lived. For more than twelve months
after he joined us, that man was never reported
even to a sergeant, far less to his captain or the
colonel. But soon after we got to Hounslow,
Vincent became entangled with a young woman,
who was certainly a great deal worse than she
ought to have been. More than once, he came
home at night very drunk; but the sergeant
of his squad was a good-hearted man, and
as the lad always went to bed quiet enough,
he managed never to report him. I often
gave the young man a little private advice to
shake off his female companion, to keep closer
to his duty, and more clear of drink; but
it was of no use. At last, one day when
the trumpet sounded for "stables" at eleven
o'clock, Vincent was so drunk that the orderly
sergeant of his troop was obliged to send him
to the guard-room. Next day he was brought
up to the orderly-room. Our old colonel,
wno was a most kind-hearted, though a very
strict officer, happened to be away on a
fortnight's leave, and the prisoners were taken
before the major: a very young man for the rank
he held, and who never could open his mouth
to a soldier without an oath or a word of abuse.