To his great satisfaction, Miles found that several of the comrades for
whom he had by that time acquired a special liking, were appointed to
the same mess with himself. Among these were his friend Willie
Armstrong, Sergeants Gilroy and Hardy, Corporal Flynn, a private named
Gaspard Redgrave, who was a capital musician, and had a magnificent
tenor voice, Robert Macleod, a big-boned Scotsman, and Moses Pyne, a
long-legged, cadaverous nondescript, who was generally credited with
being half-mad, though with a good deal of method in his madness, and
who was possessed of gentleness of spirit, and a cheerful readiness to
oblige, which seemed a flat contradiction of his personal appearance,
and rendered him a general favourite.