At this distance of time I can write dispassionately; but for many years I had recollections of petty tyrannies which made my blood boil. There was a lanky youth, four or five months older in the regiment than myself, who was related to one of the sergeant-majors, and who was, of course, booked by his relative for promotion. It was never, so far as I can learn, a part of army etiquette, but it was a common practice at that time, to steal the belongings of a new arrival, and in that way to eke out a deficiency in the kit of the plunderer. My valise had not been served out to me a week before it was denuded of one-half its contents, and I was reduced to a draft of one penny a day for pocket-money until such time as the depredations were made good. The sergeant-major's nephew was found in the act of pipeclaying a pair of gauntlet gloves which bore my number, and the immediate consequence of this was a stand-up fight in the riding-school in the presence of some fifty or sixty of the men and two or three officers who looked on from the gallery. I came out more than conqueror and recovered the stolen property; but the lanky young man was made lance-corporal next week, and it became part of his duty to instruct me in military exercises in which I was far more proficient than himself. It became a regular habit of his to keep me at work while the rest of the squad stood at ease, and he had a vocabulary which, though limited and unoriginal, was as offensive as can easily be conceived. He applied to me at last so vile an epithet that, in the heat of the moment, I forgot that I had a sabre in my hand, and, hitting out straight from the shoulder, I landed him on the mouth with the guard of the weapon. This, of course, was flat mutiny, and before I knew where I was I was seized from behind, the sabre whirled in the air, and I was lying all abroad with a sprained wrist. Then I was solemnly marched to the guardroom, and there taken in charge to await an interview with the colonel in the morning. One of the men on guard had borrowed from the regimental library a copy of Charles Reades 'It is Never too Late to Mend,' and I read that masterpiece all the afternoon and as long into the night as the waning light would allow. The guard-room bed, with its sloping board and wooden pillow, made no very luxurious sleeping-place, and I was up at daylight to finish the most absorbing and enchanting story I had ever, until then, encountered. The book retains a great portion of its old charm and power until this day for me, but at that time it shut out everything; and though, for aught I knew to the contrary, I might be sentenced to be flogged or shot, I resigned myself to the spell of the story as completely as if the future had been altogether clear. The colonel was rather dreadful when the time came, and I remember one axiom which I got from him in the first three minutes of our interview. 'Well, what have you to say for yourself?'