t
give you permission."

The General went off chuckling to write his letters; and with them
safely tucked away in his pocket, Geoffrey drove later in the day to
the station.

General Faversham did not encourage demonstrations. He shook his son
cordially by the hand--

"There's no way I would rather you spent your furlough. But come back,
Geoff," said he. He was not an observant man except in the matter of
military detail; and of Geoffrey's object he had never the slightest
suspicion. Had it been told him, however, he would only have
considered it one of those queer, inexplicable vagaries, like the
history of his coward in the Crimea.

Geoffrey's action, however, was of a piece with the rest of his life:
it was due to no sudden, desperate resolve. He went out to the war as
deliberately as he had ridden out to the hunting-field. The realities
of battle might prove his anticipations mere unnecessary torments of
the mind.

"If only I can serve,--as a volunteer, as a private, in any capacity,"
he thought, "I shall at all events know. And if I fail, I fail not in
the company of my fellows. I disgrace only myself, not my name. But if
I do not fail--" He drew a great breath, he saw himself waking up one
morning without oppression, without the haunting dread that he
was destined one day to slink in forgotten corners of the world a
forgotten pariah, destitute even of the courage to end his misery. He
went out to the war because he was afraid of fear.

II.

On the evening of the capitulation of Paris, two subalterns of
German Artillery were seated before a camp fire on a slope of hill
overlooking the town. To both of them the cessation of alarm was as
yet strange and almost incomprehensible, and the sudden silence
after so many months lived amongst the booming of cannon had even a
disquieting effect. Both were particularly alert on this night when
vigilance was never less needed. If a gust of wind caught the fire and
drove the red flare of the flame like a ripple across the grass, one
would be sure to look quickly over his shoulder, the other perhaps
would lift a warning finger and listen to the shivering of the trees
behind them. Then with a relaxation of his attitude he would say "All
right" and light his pipe again at the fire. But after one such gust,
he retained his position.

"What is it, Faversham?" asked his companion.

"Listen, Max," said Geoffrey; and they heard a faint jingle. The
jingle became more dist