The Private was the Gunner's prey--I knew that the affair had fallen as the Gunner had said, for my friend is constitutionally incapable of lying--and I recognised that in his hands lay the boy's fate. "What do _you_ think?" said Gunner Barnabas, after a silence broken only by the convulsive breathing of the boy he was sitting on. "I think nothing," I said. "He didn't go at me. He's your property." Then an idea occurred to me. "Hand him over to his own Company. They'll school him half dead." "Got no Comp'ny," said Gunner Barnabas. "'E's a conv'lessint draft--all sixes an' sevens. Don't matter to them what he did." "Thrash him yourself, then," I said. Gunner Barnabas looked at the man and smiled; then caught up an arm, as a mother takes up the dimpled arm of a child, and ran the sleeve and shirt up to the elbow. "Look at that!" he said. It was a pitiful arm, lean and muscleless. "Can you mill a man with an arm like that--such as I would like to mill him, an' such as he deserves? I tell you, sir, an' I am not smokin' (swaggering), as you see--I could take that man--Sodger 'e is, Lord 'elp 'im!--an' twis' off 'is arms an' 'is legs as if 'e was a naked crab. See here!" Before I could realise what was going to happen, Gunner Barnabas rose up, stooped, and taking the wretched Private Shacklock by two points of grasp, heaved him up above his head. The boy kicked once or twice, and then was still. He was very white. "I could now," said Gunner Barnabas, "I could now chuck this man where I like. Chuck him like a lump o' beef, an' it would not be too much for him if I chucked. Can I thrash such a man with both 'ands? No, nor yet with my right 'and tied behind my back, an' my lef' in a sling." He dropped Private Shacklock on the ground and sat upon him as before. The boy groaned as the weight settled, but there was a look in his white-lashed, red eyes that was not pleasant. "I do not know _what_ I will do," said Gunner Barnabas, rocking himself to and fro. "I know 'is breed, an' the way o' the likes o' them. If I was in 'is Comp'ny, an' this 'ad 'appened, an' I 'ad struck 'im, as I _would_ ha' struck him, 'twould ha' all passed off an' bin forgot till the drink was in 'im again--a month, maybe, or six, maybe. An' when the drink was frizzin' in 'is 'ead he would up and loose off in the night or the day or the evenin'. _All acause of that millin' that 'e would ha forgotten in betweens._ That I would be dead--killed by the likes o' 'im, an' me the next strongest man but three in the British Army!"