"Yer bloomin' set of bullies!" he blurted out. But just then a leg from the encircling crowd neatly tripped up our young gallant and deposited him on the floor again. Once more he struggled to his feet, but as he looked round the circle of grinning faces, all many inches above him, and as he thought of his own dear little Nellie "walking out" with the fellow who was making his life unbearable, he felt a lump rise in his throat; his fists unclenched, and in another second he had sunk down on the upturned bucket, sobbing as if his heart would break, and his hot tears mingled with the beer that was trickling from his hair.
A roar of derision and disgust rose from the astonished soldiers. Then every man solemnly fetched his drink, and poured it over the prostrate lad. "'Weepin' Willie,' take thet," was the formula, as each man upset the contents of his can.
At that moment the door opened, and those who stood nearest it drew themselves up to "attention" as Captain Trevor, who had heard the noise as he was passing by, strode into the room.
"What's this?" he said, addressing the crestfallen gang of tormentors. "Off you all go to your barrack-rooms at once, and don't let this ever happen again in A Company."
They were only too glad to get off so easily, and in less than a minute Captain Trevor and Private Fox were alone.
"What does this mean, Fox? Why, surely, man, you've not been _crying_!"
"Please, sir, I couldn't 'elp it, I did feel so wretched like."
"You've left school now, remember that--we don't have men who _cry_ in the army. Get back to your room at once, and don't let me ever see you in this state again. I am disappointed in you, Fox."
Poor Willie, sick at heart and sore in limb, crept back to his barrack-room, where he was greeted with jeers and hoots, but, mindful of Captain Trevor's warning, his comrades abstained from stronger measures that night.
The months that followed made his life a perfect pandemonium. All his room-mates taxed their ingenuity to the utmost in order to devise new tortures and humiliations for "Weepin' Willie."
His bed was always soaking wet, his kit and accoutrements hidden away. They painted his buttons, they whitewashed his boots, they borrowed his blankets. When a man could not sleep, he whiled away the hours of the night by throwing the heaviest missiles he could lay his hands on at the luckless youth. On wet afternoons Willie was "crucified" for the public amusement, a process which consisted in tying up the patient's wrists just above the door, so that whenever it was opened he got a severe jerking. And yet through it all he never showed fight and never complained, but bore blows and jibes alike with stolid indifference. Although Captain Trevor never alluded to that awful night, Willie instinctively felt that his hero despised him, and that hurt him more than all the ill-usage of his room-mates. Nellie he had not seen since, but she had scribbled him a line in pencil.