For five years the life of Second Lieutenant Plodder, of the --th Foot, had been a burden to him. For more than five years Second Lieutenant Plodder had been something of a burden to the --th Foot. In the dreary monotone in which the psalm of life is sung, or was sung, in frontier garrisons before the introduction of such wildly diverting exercises as daily target practice, or measuring-distance drill, the one thing that became universally detestable was the man with the perennial grievance, and Mr. Plodder's grievance was slow promotion. There was nothing exceptionally harrowing in his individual experience; dozens of other fellows in his own and in other regiments were victims of the same malady, but for some reason Mr. Plodder considered himself the especial target of the slings and arrows of a fortune too outrageous for even a downtrodden "dough-boy" to bear in silence, and the dreary burden of his song--morn, noon, and night--was the number of years he had served, and might yet have to serve, with never a bar to his strap of faded blue. Entering the army as a volunteer in '61, he had emerged, after four years of singularly uneventful soldiering, a lieutenant in the company in which he started as private. Provost-guard duty and the like had told but little on the aggregate of present for duty with his command, and that sort of campaigning being congenial, Mr. Plodder concluded to keep it up as a profession. A congressional friend got him a second-lieutenancy at the close of the war, and the devil himself, said Mr. Plodder, got him into that particular regiment. "I never saw such a God-forsaken lot of healthy fellers in my life," he was wont to declare over the second or third toddy at "the store" in the long wintry evenings. "There ain't a man of 'em died in six years, and here I am after nigh onto twelve years' consecutive service, and I ain't a first lieutenant yit." We youngsters, with our light hearts and lighter pockets, used to rather enjoy getting old Plodder started, it must be confessed; and when pin-pool or auction-pitch had palled in interest, and we would be casting about for some time-killing device, and the word would come from the window, scattering the group of oldsters, that Plodder was on his way to the store, somebody would be apt to suggest a project for "putting up a job on Grumpy," and it would be carried _nem. con._ "Heard the news, Plod?" some young reprobate would carelessly inquire while banging the balls about the table. "What news?" says Plodder. "You're in for a file. They say old Cramps is going to die. He's off on leave now." "Who says so?" says Plodder, eying his interlocutor askance. He is always suspicious of the youngsters. "Fact, Plodder. Ask the major, if you don't believe me."