was somewhat of a martinet, and had never entertained any great favour for Will. The commanding officer resolved the sergeant should be made an example of.

It was in anticipation of the spectacle that a certain solemn stir went through the mechanically controlled body, drawn out in strict order. The culprit was brought forth to confront the Colonel, who proceeded to see the sentence carried into effect, without any symptom of dislike to the duty. William Thwaite was reduced to the ranks, and in sign of the degradation the signal was given for the usual official to remove, in the presence of the man's comrades and subordinates, the stripes on the arm of his jacket, which were the token of his grade.

Till then Will Thwaite had stood like a statue, though his face was sullen and lowering. But the moment he felt the offensive touch on his arm he sprang aside, and before anyone could anticipate the action, tore the stripes from his coat by one wrench, and flung them right in the face of the Colonel, with a savage shout:

'Take that from a better man than yourself!'

Blank consternation was the first result of the lawless defiance. The deed was such a gross breach of military discipline, such an unseemly violation of authority, that the poor Colonel gasped, and could hardly believe his senses, while the junior officers and soldiers gaped in harmony with their senior's gasp; and for an instant every energy was paralyzed.

Thwaite did not take any advantage of the second's pause to attempt a flight, which would have been as mad as what had gone before it. He stood at ease with the angry grin still on his face, till the whole company recovered themselves. He was put under arrest a second time, without offering any resistance, and marched back to durance, while the dismissed soldiers formed into groups and discussed the event of the day, filling the barrackyard with subdued commotion.

The orator who spoke beneath his breath with greatest horror of the outrage which had been committed, and wagged his head with most reprobation and foreboding, was Lawrie Thwaite, Will's cousin and brother-in-law. It was not Lawrie who, as might have been expected, carried to his poor wife, said to he devoted to her brother, the news of his fresh,

unpardonable outbreak, and the imminent danger in which he stood of something to begin with still worse than being drummed out of the regiment. A gabbling straggler sought out Jenny, and, without preparation, divulged to her the miserable incident.

Jenny wrung her hands, prematurely withered and drawn by much washing to the troop. Well might she lament and cower in apprehension. The next court-martial weighed out the terrible, but warrantable, almost compulsory retribution, that Will Thwaite should undergo a certain number of lashes before being dismissed from the service.

CHAPTER II.

JENNY'S STRUGGLES.

JENNY THWAITE, a hard-featured, hard-working middle-aged woman, was more attached to her brother than to her husband. Indeed, it was alleged that she had married Lawrie Thwaite principally that she might have a chance of following Will to India and being still near him. The reason for this perversion of natural regard might exist in the fact that while poor Will, smart as he was, had sore need of such protection as she could afford him, there was no question that Lawrie Thwaite was quite capable of taking care of himself. In addition, Jenny had never borne a child, which might have broken the old allegiance, while Will had all along been like her child, seeing that he was nearly fifteen years her junior. She had looked after him in these old hard days of his youth; she

had toiled to procure for him an education that might be more in keeping with his future than with his present fortunes; she had suffered the keen disappointment of seeing him grow up wild and unsteady, until he forsook the trade to which he had been apprenticedonly stopping short of breaking his indentures and leaving Jenny to pay the forfeit-and enlisted into an infantry regiment under marching orders for India. Then Jenny consented to marry her cousin, who was in the same regiment, while he stoutly denied ever having decoyed Will into the service.

Lawrie was more Jenny's contemporary than Will's, and having been on the look-out for a careful, managing wife, who might wash, or do dressmaking, or perhaps keep the girls'school, and so greatly multiply his resources, he had hovered about Jenny Thwaite with matrimonial intentions for years.

Jenny had not been a weak woman so as to remain blind to her boy's delinquencies; had rated and reproached him, and sometimes was not on speaking terms with him for days; but it was all for his good. She loved him faithfully through his worst scrapes, and was secretly serving him, even while she was