Oliver paid heavy penalties for his ambition, in the Masonic Hall—converted for the nonce into a drill hall—and in the five-acre field, where the volunteers went through their exercise. Discipline alone prevented Jack Dadd and his cronies from roaring and rolling about with laughter at the recruit’s disqualifications and misdemeanours. After many evenings’ enforced attendance and irksome drudgery, at the hall and in the field, and a journey along with some scores of excited men cooped up in the insufficient accommodation of a limited number of railway carriages, followed by a march of several miles through clouds of dust in order to perform a series of wildly entangled evolutions, before a general officer, who smiled grimly at the performance, and marked out Oliver for particular reprobation, Oliver counted disconsolately his gains from the extensive sacrifice of his leisure. He was on easier terms with Jack Dadd and the rest, since they had at least one more subject in common. He was invited as a matter of course, and had, indeed, a right, to join the others in what Jack called their ‘watering,’ and which might more appropriately have been styled their ‘beering,’ and their occasional little suppers at the inns they affected after drill. These young men of the people were not dissipated fellows farther than what was implied by the fact that certain members, like Jack, were inclined to aspire to a flavour of dissipation as an element in manliness. Their gambling was to a very limited extent, though it might reach to the bottom of their slenderly lined purses, in stakes of small silver at the billiard table, which an enterprising Friarton innkeeper had provided for them, as well as for their betters, in addition to cribbage boards and packs of cards. The noise and riot into which the high spirits of the company broke out at times might be a little coarse, but it was not more outrageous than the mad nonsense which Oliver had witnessed, and, sober-minded as he was for the most part, had joined in, occasionally, when well-bred lads met in each other’s rooms on the banks of the Isis. For that matter, its utterance served in both cases as a safety-valve for the exuberance of life, the joy in existence, which soon enough expends itself and is replaced by a burden of care, worry and weariness, even when men stop short of bitterness of heart and despair of spirit.