eyes staring roundly over the rim asked, "I say, Coppy, is it pwoper to kiss big girls?"

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By jove! you're beginning early. Who do you want to kiss?"

"No one.

My muvver's always kissing me if I don't stop her. If it isn't pwoper, how was you kissing Major Allardyce's big girl last morning?" Coppy's brow wrinkled.

How many people have you told about it?" asked Coppy.

"Only me myself. I fought you wouldn't like."

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Winkie," said Coppy, shaking the small hand, you're the best of good fellows. Look here, you can't understand all these things. One of these days I'm going to marry Miss Allardyce, and then she'll be Mrs. Coppy, as you say."

There was a long pause, broken by Wee Willie Winkie.

"Are you fond of vis big girl, Coppy?"

"It's in a different way," said Coppy.

"You

see, one of these days Miss Allardyce will belong to me, but you'll grow up and command the regiment, and all sorts of things. It's quite different, you see.'

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Very well," said Wee Willie Winkie, rising. "If you're fond of ve big girl, I won't tell any one. I must go now."

The idea that he shared a great secret with Coppy kept Wee Willie Winkie unusually good for three weeks. Then the Old Adam broke out, and he made what he called a " camp fire" at the bottom of the garden. How could he have foreseen that the flying sparks would have lighted the colonel's little hayrick and consumed a week's store for the horses? Sudden and swift was the punishment - deprivation of the good-conduct badge, and, most sorrowful of all, two day's confinement to barracks,--the house and veranda, coupled with the withdrawal of the light of his father's countenance.

He took the sentence like the man he strove to be, drew himself up with a quivering underlip,

saluted, and, once clear of the room, ran to weep bitterly in his nursery called by him "my quarters." Coppy came in the afternoon and attempted to console the culprit.

"I'm under awwest," said Wee Willie Winkie, mournfully, "and I didn't ought to speak to you."

Very early the next morning he climbed on to the roof of the house that was not forbidden

and beheld Miss Allardyce going for a ride. "Where are you going?" cried Wee Willie Winkie.

"Across the river," she answered, and trotted forward.

Now the cantonment in which the 195th lay was bounded on the north by a river-dry in the winter. From his earliest years, Wee Willie Winkie had been forbidden to go across the river, and had noted that even Coppy had never set foot beyond it. Wee Willie Winkie had once been read to, out of a big blue book, the history of the Princess and the Goblins a most wonderful tale of a land where the Goblins were always

warring with the children of men. Ever since that date it seemed to him that the bare black and purple hills across the river were inhabited by Goblins, and, in truth, everybody had said that there lived the Bad Men. And here was Major Allardyce's big girl, Coppy's property, preparing to venture into their borders! What would Coppy say if anything happened to her? She must be turned back.

The house was still. Wee Willie Winkie reflected for a moment on the very terrible wrath of his father and then broke his arrest. It was a crime unspeakable. The low sun threw his shadow, very large and very black, on the trim garden paths, as he went down to the stables and ordered his pony. It seemed to him in the hush of the dawn that all the big world had been bidden to stand still and look at Wee Willie Winkie, guilty of mutiny. The drowsy groom handed him his mount, and he went out at a footpace, stepping on the soft mold of the flower borders.

He turned into the road, leaned forward, and

rode as fast as the pony could put foot to the ground, in the direction of the river.

But the liveliest of ponies can do little against the long canter of a Waler. Miss Allardyce was far ahead, had passed through the crops, beyond the police post, where all the guards were asleep, and her mount was scattering the pebbles of the river bed as Wee Willie Winkie left the cantonment and British India behind him. Bowed forward and still flogging, Wee Willie Winkie shot into Afghan territory, and could just see Miss Allardyce, a black speck, flickering across the stony plain.

Almost at the foot of the hills Wee Willie Winkie saw the Waler blunder and come down heavily. Miss Allardyce struggled clear, but her ankle had been severely twisted, and she could not stand. She wept copiously, and was surprised by the apparition of a white, wide-eyed child in khaki, on a nearly spent pony.

"Are you badly, badly hurted?" shouted Wee Willie Winkie, as soon as he was within range. "You didn't ought to be here."