d in civilian dress as his own master on the new journey. It
was characteristic of him to start early and to slip out of his latest
phase with so little fuss. For the first two years of his service, while
men of his class were gaining high promotions, he had served in the
ranks. He had done it as a uselessly proud protest. In the ranks one did
the real work, faced most of the danger and won the fewest decorations.
He had loved the ranks for their quiet self-effacement and had preferred
to be reckoned in their number.

It had been dawn when he had started. From the top of the hill above the
camp he had gazed back at the huddled, sleeping rows of hutments. How
lacking in individuality they were! How wilfully ugly! You could see
their like in the rear of all armies. The military mind seemed incapable
of appreciating differences and beauty. How stereotyped the past five
years had been; yes, and, while the danger had threatened, how ennobled
with duty! So ennobled that there had been times when it had almost
seemed that he was on the point of finding his kingdom.

What he hadn't expected was that he would be alive to-day. With that
thought gratitude had bubbled up and he had limped away, whistling,
through dim lanes and budding hedgerows to the little wayside country
station.

But once on board the train to London, he began to feel more like a
fugitive escaping than a hero returning. This wasn't the end of
soldiering that imagination had painted. There had been strident bands
and hysteric shouting to start him on his way to the conflict. There
had been pictorial challenges to his courage pasted on every hoarding.
There had been extravagant promises of the welcome which would await him
if he survived. Who remembered them to-day? He hummed over the words of
the latest promise, "If you come back, and you will come back, the whole
world's waiting for you." Was it? He doubted. There was something
unpleasantly furtive about the way in which men were being stripped of
their outward signs of valor and dribbled back into civilian life. It
almost seemed that statesmen had discovered something to be ashamed of
in the unforeseen heroism by which the world had been rescued.

What did it matter? The world had been saved, and he had helped to save
it. No one could deprive him of that knowledge. His joy leapt up. What
did it matter if other people considered him nearly middle-aged? He and
Terry must prove to them the contrary. He was fre