that terrible Crimean winter, when men were turning their toes up to the daisies by sections, and when the living crawled about half frozen, half sodden. Mick’s old chestnut mare (G 11) was the only horse of the troop that survived the winter, kept alive by her owner’s patient and unremitting care: if it was true, as fellows swore who found her cruelly rough--she was known by the name of the “Dislocator,” given to her by a much-chafed recruit, whose anatomy her trot had wholly disorganised--if it was true that in that hard winter she had frozen quite hard, and had never since come properly thawed, it was to Mick’s credit that she was still saving the country the price of a remount. There was no smarter man or cleaner soldier in all the corps than the harum-scarum Tipperary man; he had a brogue that you could cut with a knife; and there was nothing he would not do for whisky but shirk his turn of duty and hear his regiment belittled without promptly engaging in single combat with the disparager of the “Ould Strawboots.” Mick did a good deal of punishment drill at varying intervals, and his hair was occasionally abnormally short as a result of that species of infliction known as “seven days’ cells.” He had seldom any other crime than “absent without leave,” and he had never been tried by court-martial, although more than once he had had a very narrow squeak, especially once when he was brought into barracks by a picket after a three days’ absence, with a newspaper round his shoulders instead of stable jacket and shirt. No doubt he had drunk those articles of attire, but the plea that they had been stolen saved him from the charge of making away with “regimental necessaries,” which is a court-martial offence. The 30th Light, just home from the Crimea, were quartered at York; and Mick, after two or three escapades which were the pardonable result of his popularity as one of the heroes of the Light Cavalry charge, had settled down into unwonted steadiness. He went out alone every evening, and at length his chum took him to task for his unsociality, and threatened to “cut the loaf.” “Arrah now,” was Mick’s indignant reply, “it’s a silly spalpeen ye are to go for to think such a thing. Sure if it hadn’t been a great saycret intirely, ye’d have known all about it long ago. I’ve been coortin’, ye divil! Sure an’ she’s the purtiest crayture that iver ye clapt yer two eyes upon, aye, an’ a prudent girl too. So that’s the saycret, chum; an’ now come on up to the canteen, an’ bedad we’ll drink luck an’ joy to the wooin’!”