They had me in chokey at Paisley and they had me in chokey at Wigtown, but by the living thunder if another of them lays a hand on me I'll make him remember Corporal Rufus Smith! It's a darned fine country this, where they won't give a man work, and then lay him by the heels for having no visible means of subsistence." "I am sorry to see an old soldier so reduced," said I."What corps did you serve in ?" "H Battery, Royal Horse Artillery.

Bad cess to the Service and every one in it! Here I am nigh sixty years of age, with a beggarly pension of thirty-eight pound ten--not enough to keep me in beer and baccy." "I should have thought thirty-eight pound ten a year would have been a nice help to you in your old age," I remarked.
"Would you, though ?" he answered with a sneer, pushing his weather-beaten face forward until it was within a foot of my own.
"How much d'ye think that slash with a tulwar is worth?
And my foot with all the bones rattling about like a bagful of dice where the trail of the gun went across it.

What's that worth, eh?
And a liver like a sponge, and ague whenever the wind comes round to the east--what's the market value of that?
Would you take the lot for a dirty forty pound a year--would you now ?" "We are poor folk in this part of the country," I answered.

"You would pass for a rich man down here." "They are fool folk and they have fool tastes," said he, drawing a black pipe from his pocket and stuffing it with tobacco.

"I know what good living is, and, by cripes! while I have a shilling in my pocket I like to spend it as a shilling should be spent.