‘So you got past the gate, did you? Mind you stop, now you’ve got in. Don’t try and run off again with your bounty and kit.’ The suspicious sergeant scented a probable deserter. ‘I shouldn’t have come in if I’d wanted to go out directly afterwards,’ Herbert plucked up courage to say; but the scene was so new, and he felt so forlorn in his loneliness and his strange new clothes, that he had not much spirit left in him. ‘Don’t answer me with cheek,’ cried the sergeant, very sharply. ‘I want none of your slack jaw or back jaw. Hold your tongue, that’s what you’ve got to do, and do as you’re bid.’ ‘Now look here,’ he went on, after a pause; ‘there’s your bed, and that’s your shelf; mind you keep them clean and proper. Don’t you try to lie down on the one before the right time, nor put what ain’t authorised on the other. You’ll be for recruits’ drill at six sharp to-morrow; don’t let me have to tell you twice to turn out, and mind you don’t get straying away so that you can’t answer your name at tattoo roll-call to-night. Mind, too, what your comrade says; I’ll tell you off to Boy Hanlon because you’re much of an age; mind him and what he tells you, and he’ll keep you straight. Lads’--this to the room--‘have any of you seen “the Boy”?’ ‘No, sergeant, not these hours past. He’s in the usual place, I’ll go bail.’ ‘The canteen?’ Some of the men laughed and nodded, and the sergeant went off in search. No one took any notice of Herbert, as he sat upon the edge of his iron cot at the far end of the room. Everybody seemed busy with his own affairs. But presently some one near the door shouted, ‘Why, here’s “the Boy”! Duke’s Own! “’Tchun,”’ giving the word of command as though an officer was approaching. It was only a wizened little man, who might have been fifty or barely five. He hadn’t a hair on his fresh coloured cheeks, but they were much wrinkled as though he were prematurely aged.