Private Smith was at first a mystery to his comrades. That he was a gentleman by birth they knew at once. That he had nothing of the “lardy-dardy” fine gentleman about him they found out almost as quickly. There was no better horseman in the regiment, and he could groom, and loved to groom, the serviceable creature assigned to him, as well as he could ride him. He learned his drill in an extraordinarily short space of time, and seemed to take an interest and delight in manœuvres which most soldiers would have given worlds or a week’s pay to be able to shirk. Upon several occasions Private Smith was asked to become servant to an officer, but he always refused. When it was pointed out to him that, by accepting the situation, he would have more liberty, more pay, and various perquisites, he always answered, “I had rather remain in the ranks and learn my duty,” and remain he did. One young officer took his refusal very much to heart. “I know why you refuse, Smith,” he said; “it’s because I am a nobody, and you are a gentleman; and, to tell you the truth, I thought you could make a gentleman of me, if we were more together; and you see, with these confounded rules and customs of the service, I can’t see as much of you as I wish, while you are in the ranks.” This brave lad and good officer was a hairdresser’s son from Oxford, and he afterwards fell, sword in hand, before Candahar. No bad word was ever known to escape from Smith’s lips, and as he seemed to loathe the coarser temptations of barrack life, some of the worst set in the regiment took it into their heads that “Gentleman Smith,” for so they called him, could be bullied with impunity. They soon found they were mistaken. The troop to which Smith belonged was quartered in a small barracks in an out-station, away from the rest of the regiment. One night, the Corporal of Smith’s room, a man named Tozer, ordered a small trumpeter to climb over the barrack wall and fetch him a bottle of rum from the shop of a sutler outside. The boy vainly protested against this order, on the ground that the drop from the wall was too great, and that, if caught, he would be severely punished. Upon this, Tozer, who was a big, hulking fellow, seized the lad with one hand, while with the other he gave him a violent box on the ear. “Leave that boy alone,” said Smith, looking up from the camp bed on which he was sprawling, reading a book. “What’s that you say?” bellowed the Corporal. “I said, ‘Leave that boy alone,’ and I say that, if you don’t, it will be the worse for you.”