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It was, most literally, wild horseplay, and by the time it was finished the recruits and the company were weak with fatigue and laughter.

“That’ll do,” said Purvis, while the men rocked in their saddles. “I don’t see any particular odds between any of you. C Company! Does anybody here know anything against any of these men?”

“That’s a bit of the Regulations,” Matthews whispered. “Just like forbiddin’ the banns in church. Really, it was all settled long ago when the names first came up.”

There was no answer.

“You’ll take ’em as they stand?”

There was a grunt of assent.

“Very good. There’s forty men for twenty-three billets.” He turned to the sweating horsemen. “I must put you into the Hat.”

With great ceremony and a shower of company jokes that I did not follow, an enormous Ally Sloper top-hat was produced, into which numbers and blanks were dropped, and the whole was handed round to the riders by a private, evidently the joker of C Company.

Matthews gave me to understand that each company owned a cherished receptacle (sometimes not a respectable one) for the papers of the final drawing. He was telling me how his company had once stolen the Sacred Article used by D Company for this purpose and of the riot that followed, when through the west door of the schools entered a fresh detachment of stripped men, and the arena was flooded with another company.

Said Matthews as we withdrew, “Each company does Trials their own way. B Company is all for teaching men how to cook and camp. D Company keeps ’em to horse-work mostly. We call D the circus-riders and B the cooks. They call us the Gunners.”

“An’ you’ve rejected me,” said the man who had done sea-time, pushing out before us. “The Army’s goin’ to the dogs.”

I stood in the corridor looking for Burgard.

“Come up to my room and have a smoke,” said Matthews, private of the Imperial Guard.

We climbed two flights of stone stairs ere we reached an immense landing flanked with numbered doors.

Matthews pressed a spring-latch and led me into a little cabin-like room. The cot was a standing bunk, with drawers beneath. On the bed lay a brilliant blanket; by the bed head was an electric light and a shelf of books: a writing table stood in the window, and I dropped into a low wicker chair.

“This is a cut above subaltern’s quarters,” I said, surveying the photos, the dhurri on the floor, the rifle in its rack, the field-kit hung up behind the door, and the knicknacks on the walls.

“The Line bachelors use ’em while we’re away; but they’re nice to come back to after ‘heef.'” Matthews passed me his cigarette-case.

“Where have you ‘heefed’?” I said.

“In Scotland, Central Australia, and North-Eastern Rhodesia and the North- West Indian front.”

“What’s your service?”

“Four years. I’ll have to go in a year. I got in when I was twenty-two–by a fluke–from the Militia direct–on Trials.”

“Trials like those we just saw?”

“Not so severe. There was less competition then. I hoped to get my stripes, but there’s no chance.”

“Why?”

“I haven’t the knack of handling men. Purvis let me have a half-company for a month in Rhodesia–over towards Lake N’Garni. I couldn’t work ’em properly. It’s a gift.”

“Do colour-sergeants handle half-companies with you?”

“They can command ’em on the ‘heef.’ We’ve only four company officers– Burgard, Luttrell, Kyd, and Harrison. Pigeon’s our swop, and he’s in charge of the ponies. Burgard got his company on the ‘heef,’ You see Burgard had been a lieutenant in the Line, but he came into the Guards on Trials like the men. He could command. They tried him in India with a wing of the battalion for three months. He did well so he got his company. That’s what made me hopeful. But it’s a gift, you see–managing men–and so I’m only a senior private. They let ten per cent of us stay on for two years extra after our three are finished–to polish the others.”