‘No,’ said Polson. ‘I always meant to join, and I thought I’d get ready as far as I could.’ ‘Now look here, my lad,’ said the Sergeant. ‘You’ve been through the mill before, you have. You’re a deserter, you know, that’s what you are.’ Polson laughed. He had thought never to laugh again, but the accusation tickled him. ‘I beg your pardon, Captain Volnay,’ he said, saluting in officer’s fashion--the only way he had been taught; ‘but perhaps you will speak up for me.’ ‘Deserter?’ said Volnay. ‘Rubbish! Known the man for years. Always keen on the service, and got ready for it. Jervase.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘You’re a pretty good shot, I gather?’ ‘Thank you, sir.’ ‘Any instruction in musketry?’ ‘Pretty fair, sir.’ ‘Put him through his facings, Sergeant, in the riding school at four o’clock this afternoon. I’ll be there. You hear, Jervase?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ At this juncture the Sergeant surprised a wink from Volnay, which that young gentleman supposed to have been unseen, and he fell a-thinking. The result of his cogitation was rapid and conclusive. The young man who knew the minutiae of his trade of soldier, and had an officer’s trick of salute, and was on winking terms with the wealthiest man in the regiment, was a person to be made up to, and to be made up to in the least transparent way. ‘We’re awfully short-handed, sir,’ said the Sergeant, touching his forage cap to Volnay. ‘We might utilise this man as a drill, sir, if you’ll permit me to suggest such a thing. I could get on twice as fast, sir, if I’d half the squad to deal with.’ ‘Very well,’ said Volnay. ‘I’ll see the adjutant about that.’ And the raw recruit was drilling his barrack-room comrades before he or they had fitted on a uniform, and his ringing ‘Carry--so!’ or ‘Ground--oh!’ sounded through the square as imperiously as any in those first busy days. ‘You’re a (conventional) wonder, you are,’ said the drill instructor at the close of the second day. ‘You’ve got the powers that be behind you, and you’ll be one of _us_ in a month or two. Promotion’s quick when the word comes for blood and rust and mud and oil.’ CHAPTER VIII If Polson had not to be taught how to ride, how to handle a sabre or a gun, or how to balance himself in the goose-step--matters which he had taken the pains to master long ago--there were still certain things to learn, and the button stick, and the flat and chain burnish, and the pots of chrome yellow, and blacking, and pipeclay, were just as strange to him as they would have been to any other raw recruit; so that he was teaching his business at one end and learning it at the other for a matter of some four or five days. There was a poor exile of Erin in the shape of an impecunious Irish nobleman, who enlisted on the same day with Polson and whose uniform was tried on in the same hour. They were in the tailor’s shop together with a hurried Sergeant standing over them. The aristocratic Paddy pulled on his trousers with a heavy sigh.