Being supplied with my regimentals, I was ordered to "make away" with my old clothing, dealers in which attended the barrack-rooms every morning in search of plunder. My suit was rather primitive, and not likely to fetch much; still it was worth more than that of a fellow recruit who happened to be domiciled in the same room with me, for he had been a sort of labouring boy in a tallow-chandlering concern, and the sergeant had ordered him to take his greasy clothes away out of the room and bury them in the dung-heap. He had, however, a good silver watch, and therefore his _personal_ effects were worth more than mine. Like mine, his best clothes were at home; he had left home in a "hurry." Every atom of clothing had to be sold. I tried hard to keep the blue worsted stockings which my poor old mother had knitted with her own blessed hands, and the calico shirt my sisters had made at the village school, but the hard-visaged, firm-toned sergeant of my squad was inexorable. "Bundle 'em up, bundle 'em up, and be handy about it; you will have more to think about besides yer mother _now_," said he. I never liked the "old ruffian," as the men frequently designated him, after that; and it was a relief to the whole troop when he fell one of the first victims to a fever that broke out in the camp at Chobham a few years afterwards. I looked affectionately at my old clothes: the blue smock-frock, artistically worked with white thread all over the part that covered the back, breast, and shoulders--the white "Jerry" hat, in the brim of which stuck a feather from the wing of a rook hatched in the old rookery that had for many years before I was born stood at the corner of the bridlepath leading from my father's farm-yard to the hills we called the "sheep pastures;" but the sergeant was inexorable. "Bundle 'em up, bundle 'em up." I snatched the feather from under the greasy band, and for years it was deposited in the bottom of my sabretache. That simple crow's feather I thought had flown over the old house at home, and I looked upon it as a sort of connecting link between myself and my family, and often have I gazed upon it until sick at heart. It may seem strange; and those people who have an idea that a soldier has no feeling--I have often heard people say that soldiers have _no souls_-- may feel disinclined to believe my statement when I say that nothing in the shape of money, unless it would have insured my discharge, would have induced me to have parted with that simple _feather_. But to return to my story. The hob-nailed boots stockings, shirt, fustian trousers, and waistcoat--I had no coat--were all sold to an Irishwoman for four shillings and sixpence: I spent the money among my comrades. My fellow recruit kept his watch, but freely assisted to drink the proceeds of my wardrobe.