Cottar was cantering across to polo, and he looked a very satisfactory figure of a man as he gave easily to the first excited bucks of his pony, and slipped over a low mud wall to the practice-ground. There were more than Mrs. Corporal Morrison who felt as she did. But Cottar was busy for eleven hours of the day. He did not care to have his tennis spoiled by petticoats in the court; and after one long afternoon at a garden-party, he explained to his major that this sort of thing was “futile piffle,” and the major laughed. Theirs was not a married mess, except for the colonel’s wife, and Cottar stood in awe of the good lady. She said “my regiment,” and the world knows what that means. None the less when they wanted her to give away the prizes after a shooting-match, and she refused because one of the prize-winners was married to a girl who had made a jest of her behind her broad back, the mess ordered Cottar to “tackle her,” in his best calling-kit. This he did, simply and laboriously, and she gave way altogether. “She only wanted to know the facts of the case,” he explained. “I just told her, and she saw at once.” “Ye-es,” said the adjutant. “I expect that’s what she did. Comin’ to the Fusiliers’ dance to-night, Galahad?” “No, thanks. I’ve got a fight on with the major.” The virtuous apprentice sat up till midnight in the major’s quarters, with a stop-watch and a pair of compasses, shifting little painted lead-blocks about a four-inch map. Then he turned in and slept the sleep of innocence, which is full of healthy dreams. One peculiarity of his dreams he noticed at the beginning of his second hot weather. Two or three times a month they duplicated or ran in series. He would find himself sliding into dreamland by the same road—a road that ran along a beach near a pile of brushwood. To the right lay the sea, sometimes at full tide, sometimes withdrawn to the very horizon; but he knew it for the same sea. By that road he would travel over a swell of rising ground covered with short, withered grass, into valleys of wonder and unreason. Beyond the ridge, which was crowned with some sort of street-lamp, anything was possible; but up to the lamp it seemed to him that he knew the road as well as he knew the parade-ground. He learned to look forward to the place; for, once there, he was sure of a good night’s rest, and Indian hot weather can be rather trying. First, shadowy under closing eyelids, would come the outline of the brushwood-pile; next the white sand of the beach-road, almost overhanging the black, changeful sea; then the turn inland and uphill to the single light. When he was unrestful for any reason, he would tell himself how he was sure to get there—sure to get there—if he shut his eyes and surrendered to the drift of things. But one night after a foolishly hard hour’s polo (the thermometer was 94° in his quarters at ten o’clock), sleep stood away from him altogether,