om the depths of his easy
chair, a very silly thing.

"I see you've not managed to get into khaki yet, Sergeant."

Marigold took a tactical pace or two to the door.

"Neither have you, sir," he said in a respectful tone, and went out.

Randall laughed, though I saw his dark cheek flush. "If Marigold had
his way he would have us all in a barrack square."

"Preferably in those fluid trenches of the present," said I. "And he
wouldn't be far wrong."

My eyes rested on him somewhat stonily. People have complained
sometimes--defaulters, say, in the old days--that there can be a
beastly, nasty look in them.

"What do you mean, Major?" he asked.

"Sergeant Marigold," said I, "is a brave, patriotic Englishman who has
given his country all he can spare from the necessary physical
equipment to carry on existence; and it's making him hang-dog miserable
that he's not allowed to give the rest to-morrow. You must forgive his
plain speaking," I continued, gathering warmth as I went on, "but he
can't understand healthy young fellows like you not wanting to do the
same. And, for the matter of that, my dear Randall, neither do I. Why
aren't you serving your country?"

He started forward in his chair and threw out his arms, and his dark
eyes flashed and a smile of conscious rectitude overspread his
clear-cut features.

"My dear Major--serving my country? Why, I'm working night and day for
it. You don't understand."

"I've already told you I don't."

The boy was my guest. I had not intended to hold a pistol to his head
in one hand and dangle a suit of khaki before his eyes in the other. I
had been ill at ease concerning him for months, but I had proposed to
regain his confidence in a tactful, fatherly way. Instead of which I
found myself regarding him with my beastly defaulter glare. The blood
sometimes flies to one's head.

He condescended to explain.

"There are millions of what the Germans call 'cannon fodder' about. But
there are few intellects--few men, shall I say?--of genius, scarcely a
poet. And men like myself who can express--that's the whole vital
point--who can EXPRESS the higher philosophy of the Empire, and can
point the way to its realisation are surely more valuable than the
yokel or factory hand, who, as the sum-total of his capabilities, can
be trained merely into a sort of shooting machine. Just look at it, my
dear Major, from a commonsense point of view--" He forgot, the amazing
young idiot, that he wa