22 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



pleasure in London, and, in consequence, as my brother officers 

 resolved among themselves to remain and do their duty, they 

 good-naturedly favoured my desire, took my guards, and enabled 

 me to ride backwards and forwards to town on as good a hack 

 as ever was ridden, called Tippetty-whitchet. This I did after 

 every parade, from which a very kind commanding officer would 

 not (for ever) excuse me. The late Colonel Sutton was in com- 

 mand, and as almost every officer kept a dog, one day, when 

 half a dozen curs were barking at me, Sutton said, good- 

 humouredly, " Why, Berkeley, you are so little here, the very 

 regimental dogs don't know you." Heaven knows there was 

 not much society just then, if there ever is, in Chatham, so the 

 dining out of an officer of my regiment was very rare, and the one 

 who did dine out often had some practical or boyish joke played 

 on him. One day the lot to dine out fell on a friend of mine, 

 when the old choleric and bearded barrack goat was inducted 

 into his bedroom, in company with all the cur dogs of the 

 barrack yard, and the barrack-master's cock and hens, which 

 were put to roost on the back of the tent bed. The lamp at 

 the foot of the stairs, whereat he would have to light his candle, 

 was then carefully extinguished, and everybody retired to their 

 rooms. Late at night the en trance -door opened, and my 

 friend's voice was heard apostrophising the defunct light, and 

 the trimming of lamps by degenerate mess-waiters. Ere he 

 had stumbled many steps up the dark stairs, the goat, supposed 

 to be in the barrack yard, came in for his share of malediction, 

 for wafting his perfume even to the officers' apartments. As 

 the irate but unsuspecting step neared the bedroom door, a 

 creeping noise of nails might be heard on its floor within, of 

 dogs who were tired of a blind melee in the dark with the 

 choleric goat, and who knew that they were where they ought 

 not to be, and that in all probability kicks were coming. The 

 nails all congregated to the crack of the door, and when it 

 was opened every dog dashed over each other's back to get out, 

 some yelling with what they had, and others in expectation of 

 what they might get, and downstairs they all went, an avalanche 



