his stubby grey hair looked as stiff as Medusa's crest of snakes.

Wide-awake Jack was the name by which his mates accosted him—in reality Corporal Marks. He, too, was decorated, and had a wooden leg, which he found useful in conversation, when emphasizing some knotty point. He was tapping the ground pretty smartly at this moment, as he cut himself another quid of tobacco.

"Lees!" he returned, in a huffy voice, "it is the truth and nothing but the truth, and I'll take my oath to that."

But here a little peal of girlish laughter interrupted him. These two old men loved each other like David and Jonathan, or Damon and Pythias, or like any other noble pair of friends, and would have died for each other, and yet would wrangle and argue and spar fifty times a day; and the chief bone of contention was a certain episode—on an Indian battle-field half a lifetime before.

Human nature is sadly faulty—and even in Chelsea Hospital there were mischievous spirits; and on cold, windy nights, when old bones ached, and there was general dullness, and the draughts made one shiver and huddle round the fire—then would one or another slyly egg on Sergeant McGill—or Corporal Marks—with some such question as this:

"Was it three of them Sepoys that McGill bayoneted before he got that sword-thrust—or only two?"

Or perhaps more cunningly and artfully,—

"I wish I had nabbed two of those dratted Sepoys like McGill. Marks can tell that story best——"

"Two, John Perks!" interrupted McGill, wrathfully, "it was three that I killed with my own hand, and the third was so close to me that I could see the whites of his eyes—and the devil's smile on his wicked lips—and I laughed as I ran him through, for I thought of those poor women and children—and it is the goot English I am speaking, for I have forgotten the Gaelic, I have lived so long in the land of the Sassenachs—not but what the Gaelic is milk and honey in the tongue that speaks it."

When that little mocking laugh reached their ears, both the old men reddened, like children discovered in a fault. Then they drew themselves up and saluted gravely; but the girl's eyes were full of mirth and mischief.

"Aren't you ashamed of yourselves, you two, quarrelling over a silly old battle, that every one else has now forgotten? One would think you were heathens, and not 

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