So the older wise one departed, and the younger retired to his guard-room to smoke and dream. But the affair was not over. Next morning the A.D.C. arrived at our subaltern quarters, requesting his attendance at Lord ——’s house, and our friend went at once. The general, I have always been told, was very kind-hearted. He received the young officer most courteously, and then said,
‘Mr. ——, the guard you were on is a thing of the past. We meet now as friends. I want to know how the mischief you ever managed to get to your guard, for I am positive I saw you in the ball-room.’
On receiving the reply: ‘Behind your lordship’s carriage!’ it may be imagined how the general laughed, and, no doubt, was of opinion that the young officer had shown a great deal of cleverness in getting out of what might have been a serious scrape.
This escapade recalls to my memory a story I heard given by a most amusing raconteur in Scotland. The colonel of a regiment quartered in Edinburgh Castle had been much annoyed at the number of men who not only were brought up to the orderly-room for drunkenness, but also for absence without leave, so he was determined to make an example of some one on the first opportunity. One morning the regiment was on parade, and a private soldier appeared with his coat all muddy and his cap in a battered condition, quite sober, but evidently having been engaged in a row, and ‘absent all night.’ Here was a ‘horrid example.’ So the colonel ordered a corporal’s guard to make the man a prisoner, and, forming the regiment in line, he marched the culprit in front, so that every soldier might see him. On arriving at the left flank of the line the prisoner saluted, and said, ‘Thank you, colonel; it is one of the finest regiments I ever saw. You may dismiss them,’ which rather altered the colonel’s intentions with regard to this ‘horrid example!’
I would like to command a regiment formed of officers like the Portsmouth subaltern and men like the Edinburgh private, although neither of them, I daresay, knew anything about Spenser’s ‘Faerie Queen,’ a knowledge of which is required at examinations for commissions in the army of the present day.
But I must finish now. At Portsmouth I said farewell to my dear old home in which I had passed all the years of my soldiering life, and now again I say God speed to you, old 88th; luckier than most time-honoured corps, you are Connaught Rangers still, but full of by-gone memories are the numbers 88, the sound of which has echoed in peace and war, at home and abroad.
THE END.
LONDON: PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD, BLENHEIM HOUSE.
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