down,"—the drunkard sells his necessaries.
He is confined, and put under stoppages for
this; but his downward career is too often
only arrested for a time, and when the
opportunity offers of getting out of barracks, he
again frequents the grog-shop, spends more
than he can call his own, and, anticipating
severer punishment, makes up his mind to
commit the worst crime in the catalogue of
military offences, by deserting.

Halifax is, in many respects, an excellent
military station; but the fatal facility of
procuring cheap spirits is only too patent there.
We know not whether the nest of abomination
is yet to be found, which, when Maurice
first went out to the colony, was still in
existence, and from the frequency of the
disturbances which took place there, went by the
name of "Knock-me-down Street;" but if
not "put down," it is a crying infamy that
calls for immediate extirpation. The
inhabitants of the hovels that formed this
appropriately-named spot, were a small colony of
black people of both sexes, orignally brought
from one of the remote West India islands,
by the admiral on the station, and permitted
to settle in Halifax, as a compensation for
some loss or damage experienced by them, in
the course of the war. Their notions of
colonisation were of a peculiar kind, and
consisted in drinking, and making others drunk,
in fiddling, dancing, singing, shouting, and
fighting. The squeaking tones of the kit, the
shrill laughter, and shriller screams of the
women, and the occasional report of fire-arms,
showed that the place was not only disorderly,
but dangerous, and that whoever had a
reputation worth procuring, or a life he was not
quite tired of, would do well to shun the
disgusting dens of Knock-me-down Street. This
"Suburra " was, unluckily, situated exactly
between the barracks, where different regiments
were quartered, and those who passed from
one to the other, were obliged to pass through
it. Its external hideousness was insufficient
to repel visitors from the orgies which were
held within, though by daylight no soldier
ever dared to enter; but the case was different
after dark, and many a man lived to rue the
time when his foot first crossed the threshold
of one of these haunts of licentiousness and
crime.

Amidst the various blunders, practical and
theoretical, which occupied the time of Mad
Jock, was an occasional resolve to "look up"
his own regiment, the discipline of which he
would have acted wisely in leaving altogether
to the senior major. We do not mean
to say that the cares of his new station ought
to have withdrawn Colonel Stormy from the
paramount duty of superintending his own
corps; on the contrary, he might have
exercised a constant regimental
superintendence, and at the same time have neglected
none of the staff occupations of the garrison.
But it was his misfortune to do everything
by fits and starts; at one moment he would
delegate the entire controlof the regiment to
the officer next in seniority; and at another
he would, without any previous warning,
resume the command, enter into the minutest
details, order and counter-order, revise and
find fault with everything to which he had
previously given his sanction. Because he
was not there to look after everything, he
would say the regiment was going to the
devil: everyone neglected his duty; the
officers thought of nothing but balls and
plays, and shooting parties, and gallivanting
after the ladies—he knew what they were
about when they little dreamt he was watching
them; the non-commissioned officers were
a pack of ignorant beasts—"lazy dromedaries,"
—(this was his favourite phrase), and
deserved "to be broke," every one of them;
as to the men, they were, one and all, a set
of drunken blackguards; nothing but flogging
would do them good; and straightway
he would order a parade in heavy marching
order, where, without giving time for the
regiment to appear properly under arms, he
would stalk up and down the ranks, prancing,
and taking snuff, and brandishing his cane,
and swearing at everything and everybody
that came in his way. The usual result of
one of these sudden "inspections" (as he
called them) was the ordering of half-a-dozen
courts-martial on as many unlucky fellows
for unsoldierlike conduct in not appearing
properly dressed at parade; or for some
other offence equally slight—or, it might be,
altogether fanciful. He would then call for
the defaulters' book, fasten on the words
"drunk on duty," hurry to the front some
three or four scapegraces of the regiment
whom, in spite of the standing orders to the
contrary, he had ordered to be "logged," and
read the entire regiment a lecture on drunkenness,
so worded, as to include everyone
present, and lead a bystander to suppose,
that from the senior officer to the smallest
drummer-boy on parade, they were all a
parcel of Helots; and that it was his mission
to expose and punish everyone alike; his
constant peroration being—

"But I'll take the rum out of you. Gentlemen!
Demmee, I'll take the rum out of you!"

And the plan he adopted to effect this
laudable object, .was forthwith to call for his
horse, and, riding in front, order the regiment
out to the Common, where he would put it
through a series of manoeuvres, executed in
"double time," till the men and officers were
ready to drop with fatigue: nor cease from
his exertions till he had clubbed the battalion
and rendered himself inaudible between rage
and hoarseness. He would then call the
officers to the front, desire the Adjutant to
extricate the men from the confusion into
which he had thrown them, and march them
home; counter-order the court-martial; and,
after a few pinches of snuff, taken with a
sort of grim unction, resume his ordinary