are marked by the being who gave it to you; that you will carry it to the grave; and that grave is not very far off."

Charley Greydon got still paler as this oracular speech was delivered with great solemnity, and he looked round rather piteously at the other men of the mess-not one of whom was now smiling.

"Well, I have heard that, too," mused Serjeant Benham, "and I often wondered if it was true or not."

One or two of the men said they knew it was, from cases that had happened to friends of their own; while all seemed to agree that an unaccountable wound found on the person in the morning was certainly always believed to be a mark given by a dead man.

"But you don't believe it, do you, Blunt?" asked Charley with all the mental horrors of his superstitious nature crowding at once over his mind.

"I have certainly heard it," was the response; “where I come from the common people call it a corpse-cat,' but❞

"Just hark to him!" put in Robbins, who had no great love for Blunt on account of his good-breeding. "Hark to the fellow! 'Common people,' indeed ! And who are you to speak of any Englishmen as common people?"

Serjeant Benham! Corporal Jones! Private Blunt! -all wanted in the orderly-room at once!" called out the troop-serjeant-major at the door. The three named had to rise from table immediately, button themselves up smart for an appearance before the Adjutant, and betake themselves, without a moment's delay, to his office. On their arrival there they found they were to form portion of a party of non-commissioned officers and privates under orders to proceed by the coach to Maidstone, to learn some important alteration in drill that was being introduced at the latter place; and as there was only a very brief time to spare, they were barely able to get their kits in order before it was necessary to start.

"Heigho!" yawned Robbins, when the temporary bustle of their departure was over, "we poor hussars never know where we may be kicked to from moment to moment. 'Jove, I'm glad I wasn't picked out for this job. I hate new drills,-they're all humbug, and you no sooner know 'em before a still newer one comes in, and there you go, at it again!”

"I say, Hewitt, you weren't in earnest in what you said just now?" whispered Greydon, feeling uneasily at his forehead when he found himself in a corner of the room after breakfast.

"I was in earnest, Charley; there's no mistake

about it. Every one knows the 'Dead-man's Scratch,' and I only wonder you, of all fellows, don't know everything about it."

"I don't remember, but I may have heard it all the same; there's such a lot of these yarns afloat."

"Yarns! Will you just write to your mother that you're always talking about, and see if she'll call it a yarn?””

“There ain't much humbug about that little bit," added Mat Long, strolling up ready equipped for parade. "I would just write and ask the old woman; she may know something to turn away the mischief of it."

"Well, will you write for me, Bill? Don't mind what I said when you spilt the tea; I was only joking."

"Why, can't you write yourself?"

"You know I ain't much of a scholar," was the reply; "and as the hedge-schoolmistress will have to read it to mother, I'd like it to be decent."

"Oh, all serene! I'll do it for you; only you must wait till the evening."

So it was arranged, and all went off to their duties until late in the afternoon, when Bill Hewitt, Mat Long, and Charley Greydon met in a public-house outside the barrack-gate to concoct a letter to the