4 ° 
THE STRAXD MAGAZIXE . 
“ Have you had enough ? ” asked the ser- 
geant, at last. 
“ Plenty, thanks,” said Furleigh. 
“ Enough of wandering the streets, I 
mean ? ** 
“ Yes. I’ve had more than enough of 
that.” 
“ Then why do it ? ” 
Furleigh stared at him. It seemed like 
the question of a madman. 
“ I’ve been trying hard to get up again 
ever since I ” 
“ You’ve been trying in the wrong wav, 
then. Look at me. I was down and out 
once, and I wasted a lot of time wandering 
about asking folks to help me. Some of 
’em did, a little ; but most didn’t. So 1 did 
what I thought was worse than suicide ; 
1 went off and enlisted. Look at me now. 
I’ve money in the bank, and a good coat to 
my back, and three square meals a day, 
and I shall have a pension when I’m through. 
I’ve seen quite a little of the world, too, 
and had a corking good time of it.” Furleigh 
was silent now, staring down at the table 
in front of him. The sergeant tried another 
line of argument. “ There’s nobody can 
accuse me of being anything but what I am, 
either,” he asserted. “ I’ve a record of 
twenty years’ service behind me, every day 
of it accounted for, and that’s more than 
most can say. When a man’s down and 
out, anybody can call him a rotter, and 
he can’t disprove it as a rule.” 
Furleigh winced. 
“ Unless he’s been in the army for a spell. 
Then he can push his written record under 
the nose of anyone that accuses him ! ” 
Furleigh still said nothing ; he still stared 
at the dirty tablecloth, with his hands deep 
down in his empty pockets and a look of 
indecision on his face. But the sergeant 
had not yet exhausted his list of lures. 
<£ Nobody knows who I was before 1 
joined,” he said, darkly, as though he were 
hiding some thrilling secret. 4k I gave my 
real name, because it’s against the law not 
to, and I wasn’t taking any chances.” 
Furleigh seemed interested now. 
“ Is that a fact ? Can’t a man enlist under 
an assumed name ? ” 
“ Some of ’em do, but it’s against the 
regulations, and there’s apt to be trouble if 
it’s ever discovered. What’s your name, 
now ? ” 
“ Furleigh.” 
“ I know half-a-dozen men of your name ! ” 
lied the sergeant, promptly. “ There’s one 
in the First Life Guards, one in the Middlesex, 
one in the I). L. I. Why, T must know a 
dozen of them ! ” 
“ Come along, then,” said Furleigh. “ I’ll 
enlist.” 
“ And you'll be glad of it,” the sergeant 
answered. 
An hour or two later Furleigh had been 
taken before a magistrate, and had kissed 
the Book, and had sworn to serve Her 
Majesty the Queen and obey her officers in 
Great Britain, or abroad, or in the Dominions 
beyond the seas, without question — loyally 
— and to the death. 
“ Now listen,” said the recruiting-sergeant, 
when the oath was taken and they were out on 
the street again. “ You’ve been a gentle- 
man. Forget it ! You’ve given orders all 
your life instead of taking ’em. Forget it ! 
You’re a new boy in a new school now l And 
don’t you forget that ! Be civil, obey orders 
at the jump, grin when you don’t like a thing, 
keep your fists behind you and your tongue in 
your head, and let the canteen alone ; then 
you’ll be all right.” 
II. 
It was all very well for the recruiting-ser- 
geant to give advice to Robert Furleigh. The 
advice was good, but he found that following 
it meant remoulding a life-long point of view. 
He was housed in a barrack-room with nine- 
teen other men any one of whom would have 
blacked his boots a month ago and have been 
proud to do it ; and the temptation to secure 
their respect by hinting darkly at influence 
and relations high up in the service was too 
insistent to be withstood. So at the very start 
he fell the way that all fools fall, and derision 
and abuse met him whichever way lie turned. 
He found himself dubbed a 41 ranker.” 
In the end, to get away from his com- 
rades’ roasting, he took a signalling course, 
and there his education helped him. The 
Morse Code that was a thing of mystery to 
most recruits was almost like an open book 
to him. But he had already broken every 
single rule of conduct that the recruiting- 
sergeant had laid down for him. He had made 
the amazing discovery that cads can use their 
fists, and he had fought half of the first-year 
men in the. regiment, and been licked by most 
of them. Those that had got the better of 
him bullied him on the strength of it, and the 
men that he had licked were training and 
hardening their muscles with the laudable 
desire of one day getting even. He had no 
friends. 
Even among the signallers he was unpopu- 
lar, so his proficiency with the heliograph 
