See that one now; a tall fellow, going over the ground at a rate to take common people's breath away. It is not altogether his fault that he has to run for it; his best girl is on hand to-day, and this was a critical walk round Flirtation. Drum-calls were scarcely heard, and minutes flew unheeded. No carelessness of orders kept him back, and no contempt for them make him linger now. He does not mean to have even a late; and so dashes on and wins. There is some jeering and clapping as the tall figure comes up; "Two-forty" being his affectionate soubriquet; but all the same he is there, in ranks, with about ten seconds or less to spare. Another--Oh, yes, he set out to run; anathematising the drum, the parade, and the regulations, and so soon stops; runs again--and stops, with a sort of what's-the-use air. "How much time?" he asks another, who is walking calmly on. "None at all." Whereupon he quickens his steps; but not so the second. The drum-beats come thicker and faster--that makes no odds. It is only a "skin" more or less, he says to himself; and he's sure to get it some other way, if not this; and he has lost his Christmas leave already. So, while the rest fall in, and answer to roll-call, he comes leisurely up to barracks, some minutes after the last man has shouted "Here!" That is Cadet Clinker all through; if he is going to fess, he'll "fess cold." No one knows better than he how many demerits a man may get and still keep his place in the corps; or what delicate shades of meaning there are about "taking advantage of permits." So he runs it here and runs it there; goes off limits in all sorts of ways, places, and times, and gets help from all the friendly smugglers that infest the Post. He is one who entraps others, serving out his stores in many-coloured glasses or dainty cups, teaching the younger men strange oaths and unwholesome ways; making many a weak boy ashamed of his mother's counsels and his father's rules. "_Il y a des héros en mal, comme en bien._" You see he is such a pleasant fellow,--handsome, rich, plausible; a great favourite with the ladies; and with a head about equally divided between folly and mathematics. Excellent gifts, all thrown away; and worst of all, thrown where they are stumbling blocks for other men. But he is a tremendous favourite all the same, with much more courage to do wrong than he has to do right. It is a thing to see Mr. Clinker come forth and walk about the Post, a day or two after one of his prize-fight exploits. His mouth is swelled, his eyes bruised, his nose knocked out of all its fine proportions. But he steps jauntily along, and the pretty girl at his side gazes up into the disfigured face as if Clinker were one of the first defenders of the country, newly risen from the shadows of old Fort Clinton.