Flanking him on either side, in welcome contrast to the bitter world outside, he beheld the all-familiar sight of two inviting portals, each radiating light, warmth, and good fellowship—­the one on his right hand particularly.  A moment he halted irresolutely between regimental canteen and library; then, for some reason best known to himself, he steadily ignored both, for the time being, and passing on began slowly to mount a short flight of stairs at the end of the passage.

Sweet music beguiled each reluctant step of his ascent:  the tinkle of a piano accompaniment to a roaring jovial chorus from the canteen assuring him with plaintive, but futile insistence just then, that—­

  Beer, beer! was glorious beer, etc.

Reaching the landing he paused for a space in an intent listening attitude outside the closed door of a room marked No. 3.  From within came the sounds of men’s voices raised in a high-pitched, gabbling altercation.

Turning swiftly to an imaginary audience, his expressive young countenance contorted into a grimace of unholy glee, the listener flung aloft his arms and blithely executed a few noiseless steps of an impromptu war-dance.

“They’re at it again!” he muttered ecstatically.

Some seconds he capered thus in pantomime; then, as swiftly composing his features into a mask-like expression, he turned the handle and entered.  On the big thermometer nailed outside the Orderly-room the mercury may have registered anything between twenty and thirty below zero, but inside Barrack-room No. 3 the temperature at that moment was warm enough.

Two men, seated at either end Of a long table in the centre of the room, busily engaged in cleaning their accoutrements, glanced up casually at his entrance; then, each vouchsafing him a preoccupied salutory mumble, they bent to their furbishing with the brisk concentration peculiar to “Service men” the world over.  As an accompaniment to their labours, in desultory fashion, they kept alive the embers of a facetious wrangling argument—­their respective vocabularies, albeit more or less ensanguined, exhibiting a fluent and masterly range of quaint barrack-room idiom and invective.

Both were clad in brown duck “fatigue slacks,” the rolled-up sleeves of their “gray-back” shirts disclosing the fact that the sinewy forearms of both men were decorated with gay and fanciful specimens of the tattoo artist’s genius.  A third man, similarly habited, lay stretched out, apparently sleeping on one of the cots that were arranged around the room.  Opening his eyes he greeted the newcomer with a lethargic “’Lo, Redmond!”; then, turning over on his side, he relapsed once more into the arms of Morpheus—­his nasal organ proclaiming that fact beyond doubt.