"Look here," he said, "this is no day to send a man out cutting wood. The officers can stay in their tents laughing at us fellows out in the rain. We're treated like a set of blessed dogs." "Oh, you won't go, won't you?" sneered the corporal, rejoicing at having irritated the soldier into insubordination. "No, I won't go," said Bent defiantly; "so you can do what you like about it." The corporal reported Bent to his immediate superiors, and the soldier was arrested and lodged in the guard-tent. Next morning he was brought before a court-martial and tried for disobedience of orders. Major Haszard was the president of the court. With him sat Captain Clark, Lieutenant Brown, and Ensign Parker. Bent knew it was useless to attempt a defence, for his offence was an inexcusable breach of discipline. He was found guilty, and the sentence of the court was that he should receive fifty lashes, and serve two years in gaol. The triangles were then a familiar institution in every military camp in the Waikato and in Taranaki; for those were flogging days, when even slight breaches of military rules brought down the lash upon the soldier's back. One of the regimental surgeons, Dr. Andrews, examined Bent, as was the practice before flogging was inflicted, and he reported that in his opinion the young soldier was not constitutionally fit to endure the fifty lashes ordered. Soon after Bent had been taken to his tent under guard, one of the officers of the court-martial came in to see him. This was Captain Clark, a fine jovial young Canadian-born soldier, who had rather a liking for the unfortunate man from his end of the world. "Cheer up, Bent," he said; "you'll only get twenty-five--the sentence is reduced. And put that in your mouth when you go to the triangles," and he threw down a sixpence. Then, when the guard-tent corporal was not looking, the kindly officer took a flask of rum from his breast-pocket, laid it on the tent floor, and walked away to his quarters. When Bent was called out for punishment, he quickly drank off the rum, and put the sixpence in his mouth. He knew the old soldier's recipe for a "stiff upper lip" in the agony of flogging--"bite on the bullet." The sixpence would serve him as well. It would keep his teeth from biting through his tongue in the throes of that horrible punishment.