ace
things, and with his father he discusses the affairs of the
community. And in the evening he strolls down town again, and
exchanges a few words with friends, and learns, perhaps, of boys who
haven't been lucky enough to get home on leave--of boys with whom he
grew up, who have gone west.

So it goes on for several days, each day the same. Jock is quietly
happy. It is no task to entertain him: he does not want to be
entertained. The peace and quiet of home are enough for him; they are
change enough from the turmoil of the front and the ceaseless grind
of the life in the army in France.

And then Jock's leave nears its end, and it is time for him to go
back. He tells them, and he makes his few small preparations. They
will have cleaned his kit for him, and mended some of his things that
needed mending. And when it is time for him to go they help him on
with his pack and he kisses his mother and the girls good-by, and
shakes hands with his father.

"Well, good-by," Jock says. He might be going to work in a factory a
few miles off. "I'll be all right. Good-by, now. Don't you cry, now,
mother, and you, Jeannie and Maggie. Don't you fash yourselves about
me. I'll be back again. And if I shouldn't come back--why, I'll be
all right."

So he goes, and they stand looking after him, and his old dog wonders
why he is going, and where, and makes a move to follow him, maybe.
But he marches off down the street, alone, never looking back, and is
waiting when the train comes. It will be full of other Jocks and
Andrews and Tams, on their way back to France, like him, and he will
nod to some he knows as he settles down in the carriage.

And in just two days Jock will have traveled the length of England,
and crossed the channel, and ridden up to the front. He will have
reported himself, and have been ordered, with his company, into the
trenches. And on the third night, had you followed him, you might see
him peering over the parapet at the lines of the Hun, across No Man's
Land, and listening to the whine of bullets and the shriek of shells
over his head, with a star shell, maybe, to throw a green light upon
him for a moment.

So it is that a warrior comes and that a warrior goes in a land where
war is war; in a land where war has become the business of all every
day, and has settled down into a matter of routine.

CHAPTER XI

I could not, much as I should in many ways have liked to do so,
prolong my stay in Scotland. T