Copper cringed, and the action overbalanced him so that he rolled some six or eight feet downhill, under the lee of a rough rock. His brain was working with a swiftness and clarity strange in all his experience of Alf Copper. While he rolled he spoke, and the voice from his own jaws amazed him: “If you did, ’twouldn’t make you any less of a renegid.” As a useful afterthought he added: “I’ve sprained my ankle.” The young man was at his side in a flash. Copper made no motion to rise, but, cross-legged under the rock, grunted: “’Ow much did old Krujer pay you for this? What was you wanted for at ’ome? Where did you desert from?” “Khaki,” said the young man, sitting down in his turn, “you are a shade better than your mates. You did not make much more noise than a yoke of oxen when you tried to come up this hill, but you are an ignorant diseased beast like the rest of your people—eh? When you were at the Ragged Schools did they teach you any history, Tommy—’istory I mean?” “Don’t need no schoolin’ to know a renegid,” said Copper. He had made three yards down the hill—out of sight, unless they could see through rocks, of the enemy’s smoking party. The young man laughed; and tossed the soldier a black sweating stick of “True Affection.” (Private Copper had not smoked a pipe for three weeks.) “_You_ don’t get this—eh?” said the young man. “_We_ do. We take it from the trains as we want it. You can keep the cake—you po-ah Tommee.” Copper rammed the good stuff into his long-cold pipe and puffed luxuriously. Two years ago the sister of gunner-guard De Souza, East India Railway, had, at a dance given by the sergeants to the Allahabad Railway Volunteers, informed Copper that she could not think of waltzing with “a poo-ah Tommee.” Private Copper wondered why that memory should have returned at this hour. “I’m going to waste a little trouble on you before I send you back to your picket _quite_ naked—eh? Then you can say how you were overpowered by twenty of us and fired off your last round—like the men we picked up at the drift playing cards at Stryden’s farm—eh? What’s your name—eh?” Private Copper thought for a moment of a far-away housemaid who might still, if the local postman had not gone too far, be interested in his fate. On the other hand, he was, by temperament, economical of the truth. “Pennycuik,” he said, “John Pennycuik.” “Thank you. Well, Mr. John Pennycuik, I’m going to teach you a little ’istory, as you’d call it—eh?” “’Ow!” said Copper, stuffing his left hand in his mouth. “So long since I’ve smoked I’ve burned my ’and—an’ the pipe’s dropped too. No objection to my movin’ down to fetch it, is there—Sir?”