_Man is fire, and Woman is tow, And the Devil, he comes and begins to blow--_
the same old miserable business the world's fed up with. Since then seems I've kind of made a mess of things. Burke Slavin's about right--his estimate of me." He sighed with bitter, gloomy retrospection. "I've always had a queer, intolerant sort of temperament. If I'd lived in the days of the Indian Mutiny I guess I'd have been in 'Hodson's Horse'." (Redmond started, remembering his curious dream.) "He was a man after my own heart," Yorke continued slowly, "resourceful, slashing sort of beggar . . . he ruffled it with a high hand. Bold and game as Sherman, or Paul Jones, but as ruthless as Graham of Claverhouse. He put the ever-lasting fear into the rebels of Oude--something like Cromwell did in Ireland. My old Governor served through the Mutiny--he's told me stories of him. My God!"
He drew his fur coat closer round him. "Well!"--Redmond watched the sombre profile--"as I was saying . . . I 'muckered'. . . . Since then, with the years, I guess I've been climbing down the ladder of illusions till I'm right in the stoke-hole, and Old Nick seems to grin and whisper: 'As you were! my cashiered Sub.--As you were!' every time I chuck a brace and try to climb up again. How's that for a bit of cheap cynicism?"--the low, bitter laugh was not good to hear--"Man!"--the brooding eyes narrowed--"I've sure plumbed the depths--knocking around, with the right to live. Port Said, Buenos Aires, Shanghai. . . . I've certainly travelled. Some day I'll throw the book at you. Now--substance and ambition gone by the board long ago, and mighty little left of principle I guess--I am--what I am--everything except a prodigal, or a remittance-man--I never worried them at Home--that way. . . ."
He spoke with a sort of reckless earnestness that moved his hearer more than that individual cared to show. Redmond felt it was useless to offer mere conventional sympathy in a case like this. He did the next best thing possible--he remained silently attentive and let the other run on.
"You take three men now--stationed in the same detachment," resumed Yorke wearily, "by gum! they're thrown together mighty close when you come to think of it. It's different to the Post, where there's a crowd. Life's too short to start in explaining minutely just what that difference is. Fact remains! . . . to get along and pull together they've got to like each other--have something in common--give and take. Otherwise the situation becomes d----d trying, and trouble soon starts in the family."