Why, certainlee. I'm kind of fond of my ha-mmer. It's a mascot. I druv the last rivet in the hull of the battleship Pamunkey with that l'ill ha-mmer when I was in the Navy Yard."

"Well, can you be surprised at the poor devil of an R.S.O. being a bit taken aback?"

Yes, sir! Why shouldn't I carry a ha-mmer? I've seen orficers carry all sorts of freak sticks. Bits of rhino horn that look like pieces of candy: sjamboks all broken until they droop about like strips of biltong: knobkerries with a knob as big as a punkin. Why, some of the docs. wave a stethoscope at you. I didn't much mind not getting the glad hand; but it was the whole frozen mit that made me tired. This R.S.O. looked at James and me as if we were greasers or a bunch of Dagoes. What the dooce are you talking about? What do I know about your cars? Why don't you address me properly? Who are you?'

"I tell you I was hopping mad now. 'See here, Clarence,' I butted in, it don't cut much ice who I am, but Waterbury P. Scudder is my

name, and I am a lootenant in the '

"Lootenant be dammed!' he says. 'You must be drunk: one of these casuals'-casual he called me-and"Yes; but he didn't mean what you mean by a casual; he meant a single man—a detail separated from his unit."

"I didn't feel much of a detail then, Major, and my grip began to tighten on my little ha-mmer, when old man M'Nulty gives me a yank by the slack of me pants. Easy, Mister Scudder, easy,' he says,

or we'll both get it in the neck and spend our day in chokee. See that bald-headed old coyote there with the red cravat on him? He's the boss of this joint. What he says goes, every time. I've been watching them tumble round whenever he says a piece.' Comin' along I saw a senior sta'f orficer. I passed the ha-mmer to Jim and gave a real hard-wood nickel-fitted salute. I couldn't spot his rank, so struck out for the best. 'Good-morning, General,' I

some of my ironwork which is urgently wanted at Van der Hum's Bridge. Until that gets through the bridge can't be repaired, and the army is waiting on it.' I added a lot more, but I needn't give you the whole song and dance again now. What I said went, and it soothed me some to see Mister Rubberneck hustle around to get those cars hitched on to the next train. But I was not through with it even then, 'cause every other R.S.O. seemed dead set on unhitching my stuff and sending something else along, and I had a job to prevent it. They didn't pay much attention to what I said anyway, even when they didn't treat me as a crazy Dago. That, Major, is what delayed Van der Hum's some sixty hours.

"When we started on this new proposition I had learned a bit. Leastways old James had struk somethin' and put me wise. 'Mister Scudder,' he said, 'the whole of this show is bluff. If you don't want to be left you must bluff.'

"Bluff,' I said; 'what d'you take this for? A game of poker? It's war, my boy, war! D'you get it?'

"Yes. But there's a dope that is going to prevent any of this outfit seeing your hand?' "Whar's tha'at, James?'

'hull British army. Any one without 'em is hoodooed all the time. It's pie!'

"I saw at once that ole man M'Nulty had struck it, and so long as I wasn't held up in the same way over this bridge, I reckoned there wasn't much harm to me trying the dope. Here's the ta-bs and here's the hat."

"But how did you get the stuff?" gurgled the Regular. "From a signal flag?"

Nope. I remembered that in the last share out of warm clothing and comforts sent out by your British ladies I drew a sort of liver-pad and a Waterloo hat-a woolly thing.

دو

"A Balaclava helmet?"

"That's it. I knew it was one of your durned battles. But it was out of the liver-pad I got my raw material.”

"Ah! But I see you've got the little buttons and all."

"No, sir! Those are just paper-clips from my orfice, put through my collar and flattened out at the back. They scratch some, but they're all right. The shiny peak to the hat is a bit of rubber from an old pair of gum boots fixed on with glue. Major -it's worked like 8 cha'am! I've doped the 'hull shootin' match. Got them beat-beat to a whisper!"

'Well, tell me about it."

"You won't get mad with me? 'Cause it sounds a bit of gall, now it's all over."

"No; go ahead."

"Wal. I rode along in the same train with the first wad of stuff for this place. When we stopped at a station I didn't jump down and chase no R.S.O.

No, sir! I sort of lolled me head out of the window of the brakeman's caboose-guard's van — and whistled up the nearest Tahmmie, put a lot of taffy into my voice and said, 'Look heaw, my man, give the R.S.O. my compliments and tell him I want to see him.' The man always saluted and says, 'Vurry good, sir,' ev'ry time. Then up comes the R.S.O.-fussing a bit. How ever, he smoothed down some when he sees my hat and ta-bs. 'Good morning, sir,' he says. 'Good morning,' says I. 'I have a truck of bridging material heaw for Dop Donga. Just see it goes on right now, please.'

666

'Fraid I can't, sir. I have ten shorts of supplies and one bogie of forage, and—————

See here,' I says. 'I'm on Lord Kitchener's sta'f, and he has sent me special to see that this stuff makes good at Donga as soon as possible-if not sooner. The last words his lordship'-that always made 'em cough-'said to me were, "If any one puts up any kick, you tell him it's the Chief of Sta'f he's up against, and wire me." Naow, old son, if you know Lord K. as well as I do, you'll just be chasing yerself to do what he wants without any chin-music to it. That's the proposition. Thanks awf'ly."

The narrator took a drink and pushed the same old unlighted cigar between his lips. He looked rather anxiously at the Major's face. What he saw encouraged him to proceed.

"I did the best that I could with the soft Christmas Num

ber talk, but times I let out a touch of real Amurrican, and the patient would look fairly puzzled. But 'His lordship's last words to me' fetched the possum down every time. Every car got here to the tick. James was right. Them red ta-bs are the greatest things that ever happened."

"But didn't any one spot that you had no badge on your cap?" said the Major. He was also wondering how this marvellous imitation of the way a British staff-officer talks struck the persons addressed.

"Not on your life! I was fanning the flies offen my face with it when anybody come along, and it al-ways happened that the badge was in my hand. There was not so many flies on me as I let on there

was. Major, I just hate to have to say it, but it was a liver-pad rebuilt Dop Donga Bridge. Sure thing. Yes, sir, and those girders there de-pend on two bits of cloth and a pair of paper-clips, and it seems to me that the 'hull British Armee de-pends

"There she is," interposed the Major hastily, as a distant whistle sounded. "I must be off, but I don't quite tumble to the liver - pad. Was it a plaster?"

Pom-pom dived into his tent again, and after turning the contents of his kit-bag on to the floor produced one half of a red flannel chest-protector!

"Here you are, Major. Here's the raw material, the Sta'f Orficer factory and the finished article all canned, soldered,

"Scudder, I pass, this once;
See?"

but no more.
"Yes, sir."
"Good-bye."

"But I'm coming up the bank to see you on board."

"No. I want to go alone. By the by," he added as he rose to go, "I didn't know you knew Lord Kitchener. When did you meet him?" "See here, Major, you should be up on top before the train gets in. She may not stop if they don't flag her, and she's mighty close now. Goodbye, sir.

Half-way up the embankment the commanding officer exploded. Between his bursts of laughter he heard below

him the tattoo of a knife on the table and the twang of the irrepressible one's voice raised again in song:

"Oh, my name is Solomon Levi, And I live in Salem Street, And I deal in fancy ulsterettes,

And everything else that's neat."

The performer, now minus hat and tabs, was still at it when his brother subaltern Jervis turned up for his food.

"Sorry to miss the C.O.," said the latter. "I couldn't get away before. I suppose that was him I heard going up the bank. What an awful cough he's got."

The ole man is not

"Yaas. what he was. The strain of this bridging racket's breaking him up, I guess. There's your food, Jervis. Get busy."

share his horror.

From what, then, does this horror arise? From nothing worse than a vague hallucination. Mr Benson does not wish to raise the question of capital punishment, and we may presume that he still thinks a murderer should suffer the last penalty for his crime. It is the method of death which so grimly appals Mr Benson. He shudders at "the dreadful prolongation of the frightful business." (What a pity it is that the epithets of horror are thus monotonous !) The delay between sentence and death appals him. "What equanimity of penitence is attainable," he asks magniloquently, "by a man who is

counting the moments which remain before an act of such grim and repulsive brutality as an execution is bound to be?" The criminal, we may be sure, would not thank Mr Benson for being hastened from the dock to the grave. If he were as eager as Mr Benson imagines to finish with life, he would assuredly refrain from appeal, and thus shorten the moments of suspense. That he seldom refrains is proof sufficient that the prolongation, which so acutely tries Mr Benson's nerves, is welcomed by the criminal,— that, in fact, it is as beneficent as it is beneficently meant. Then after the delay, the gallows. "I saw a picture once," says Mr Benson, "of the little whitewashed room where an execution is carried out in some jail, with its beam, its trap - door, ugly lever." Why ugly, Mr Benson, why ugly? And if such pictures distress you, why look at them? The trappings of death are solemn, even when death be mourned and honoured, and those whom solemnity affrights would be wise to choose more trivial objects of contemplation.

its

How would Mr Benson mitigate the discomforts of punishment? "I cannot help