The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1901-06-13
''PALS."
BY C. E. Weigail.
DY THEIR fruits shall We know
ID them.


-'Still to ourselve. IN every place consigned,
Our own felicity we make or find"
He lay on his bcd-cot and looked at
the stars through a chink in the roof
between window and canvas.
1t was a very hot night, of that
breathless, lurid deafness that makes
a Malta summer a WEAKNESS of the
flesh. Inside his tent 10 sturdy souls
were snoring, under their brown
blankets, the sleep of the just; but
the fourteenth, Gunner Amherst, had
been awake since Lights out" and
sleep would probably not visit his eyes
at all until the little bugler sounded
reveille from the guard-room steps at
rigne fort.
He was thinking, and perhaps there
was some excuse for the deep concen-
tration necessary for such purpose,
for Amherst did not often indulge in
an art so purely imaginative.
The tramp of the sentry up and
Down across the square on his eternal
round, the sob of the tide under the
sheer cliff, the call of a distant siren
from a ship in the grand harDor,
were the only sounds that broke the
stiffness of the night.
In the daytime Gunner Amherst had
40 time for thought. Drills and
fatigues, drinks in the canteen, crick-
ct or football, as the season might al
low; bathing, a further pint in the
canteen with a chum, and then Last
Post" did not leave much time in
which man might develop original
traits or even habit of thought, for in
his set the reading-room was not the
fashion.
His face was puckered into a frown
that marred the usual good temper of
its daredevil expression. He had
something on his mind, and that some
thing led him at last to rise from his
bed-cot, and don the few clothes neces-
sary to decency, quietly tiptoeing at
lasS out of the tent.
Keeping in the shadow of the
buildings, away from earshot of the
sentry, he skirted the camp till he
came out beyond the gray walls of the
fort above the sea. There he sat him
down among the short, sunburnt stub
BILE and sand, and barred his great chest
10 the cool night wind of heaven that
blew from the dread Sirocco quarter.
'My." he said, I'm battlin' it out,
but l don't come anigh the end of it.
If Jem takes the stripe, it's splits be-
tween him and me; there's too many
'alf quarterns-or the end on EN-
down agen me, to see me a bloomin
Bombardier Now, Jem'll go mashin'
about with n. C. O.'s, and mayn't look
at an old pal, and as to speaking to
me friendly like, why, it's all down
in the regulations as there's a great
gulf between them and the likes of
us, me in particular, as one as as a
many things down on my defaulter's
sheet as shouldn't be there. We've
been friends since the first day e
joined-'im an me together-rookies
as didn't know gun from pea-stick.
1t was always the same afore we
Joined, at 'ome in the old place. If
there was a furrow to be plowed, Jem
always took first prize, though | might
run the show pretty nigh; or a piece
TO be sung at the harvest-home, or a
holiday making, when there was
choice of anyone to go, Jem was al
ways chosen. But | was never one to
feel jealous like. Same as when e
went off with my gal, Molly Maloney-
700 could feel jealous of Jem?"
vi
gazed at the sky, crisped into points
of yellow stars. The wash of the sea
had made him melancholy, perhaps, as
he was out of sorts. That one last
glass of beer the night before in the
canteen had been too much for "Old
Devil-may-care," as his companions
called him. He leaned up against a
grey rock bowlder, and tore up tus-
sock of grass.
GA n. C. o. mayn't speak to a or
binary gunner when e pals with the
other lot o. sarjints and their belong
ings. Don't know as pants to do that
though! If it was me, don't think as
low I'd ever chuck a pal-and yet
there's a deal O. pleasure in bein'
looked up to! Not as anyone'll ever
look up to me-I'm bit of waster."
There was a suspicious moisture in
the eyes of this ''bit of a waSter" He
was not in the least a romantic figure.
His good-looking face had not the
alert expression of influencing power
that belongs to the born non-commis-
stoned officer of the British army. His
clothing, too, was unromantic, con-
sisting of a pair of khaki trousers
and patched vest hung on anyhow,
his feet thrust into broken canvas
bathing shoes.
He was reused by quick step on the
grass behind him, and started at once
into defiant life again. Tears would be
lasting disgrace if discovered, and
he became merely motionless gun
ner. looking out with stiff intentness
at the far faint line - the Sicilian
coast.
"Davy! Whatever are you doing
here?"
1t was the old name, Familiarity
spoken. No one ever called him Davy
now. To his superiors he was simply
a bad lot, though a good all-round
athlete; and to his companions, a fell
low who could crack a good tale, and
put away more beer than any other
f,I1.