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The last-joined ensign seemed, in his glowing aspiration, a better soldier than I, as, sad and dispirited, I wandered through the busy crowds, surveying with curious eye each gallant horseman as he rode proudly past. What was wealth and fortune to me? What had they ever been, compared with all they cost me? the abandonment of the career I loved, the path in life I sought and panted for.

Roger did not know whether the fact of his being away from the palace had been made public, for Cortez might consider it would cause discontent among some of his followers, were it known that their last-joined recruit was permitted to leave the town, whereas no one else was allowed to stir beyond the limits of their quarters.

There was the whole countryside pretty thick with police stations, where every man, from the sergeant to the last-joined recruit, knew the height, size, colour of hair, and so on of every one of us. If a suspicious-looking man was seen or heard of within miles the telegraph wires could be set to work. He could be met, stopped, searched, and overhauled. What chance would any of us have then?

Then the Major sat on the bed and whistled; for the spectacle of the senior native commissioned officer of the regiment, an "unmixed" Bhil, a Companion of the Order of British India, with thirty-five years' spotless service in the army, and a rank among his own people superior to that of many Bengal princelings, valeting the last-joined subaltern, was a little too much for his nerves.

Tom Marsden was a household word in every cavalry brigade; equally celebrated were his contracts and his claret. He knew every one, from Lord Wellington to the last-joined cornet; and while upon a march, there was no piece of better fortune than to be asked to dine with him.

Then the Major sat on the bed and whistled; for the spectacle of the senior native commissioned officer of the regiment, an "unmixed" Bhil, a Companion of the Order of British India, with thirty-five years' spotless service in the army, and a rank among his own people superior to that of many Bengal princelings, valeting the last-joined subaltern, was a little too much for his nerves.

He should come down the left-hand side of the ward and hear what the dairyman says. "I 'ates it, nurse; I 'ates it. Them 'orses'll kill me; them drills.... It's no life for a man, nurse." The dairyman hasn't been to the Front; you needn't go to the Front to hate the war. Sometimes I get a glimpse from him of what it means to the weaklings, the last-joined, feeble creatures.