wing, but he was keen on the work for the
work's own sake, and he revelled in the creative sense of the true
artist. The mine was his. He had first suggested it, he had surveyed
it, and plotted it, and measured and planned and worked it out on
paper; and now, when it came to the actual pick-and-shovel work, he
supervised and directed and watched each hour of work, and each yard of
progress.

It was tricky work, too, and troublesome. At first the ground was good
stiff clay that the spades bit out in clean mouthfuls, and that left a
fair firm wall behind. But that streak ran out in the second day's
working, and the mine burrowed into some horrible soft crumbly soil
that had to be held up and back by roof and wall of planking. The
Subaltern took a party himself and looted the wrecks of houses--there
was no lack of these in the village just behind the lines--of
roof-beams and flooring, and measured and marked them for sawing into
lengths, and would have taken a saw with pleasure himself.

Then he dived cheerfully into the oozing wet burrow and superintended
the shoring up, and re-started the men to digging, and emerged a moment
to see more planking passed down. He came in fact dangerously near to
making a nuisance of himself, and some of his men who had been sapping
and mining for wet and weary months past were inclined to resent quite
so much fussing round and superintendence. But the Corporal put that
right. He was an elderly man with a nasty turn of temper that had got
him into almost as many troubles in his service as his knowledge,
experience, and aptitude for hard work and responsibility had got him
out of.

'Leave the lad be,' he had said when some of the party had passed
grumbling remarks about 'too bloomin' much fuss an' feathers over a
straight simple bloomin' job.' The Corporal had promptly squashed that
opinion. 'Leave the lad be,' he said. 'He's young to the job, mebbe,
but he's not such a simple fool as some that take this for a simple
job. It's not goin' to be all that simple, as you'll find before
you're done.'

He was right, too. The crumbling soil was one little difficulty
promptly and easily met. The next was more troublesome. The soil grew
wetter and more wet until at last the men were working ankle deep in
water. The further the mine went the wetter it became. The men worked
on, taking their turn at the narrow face, shovelling out the wet muck
and dragging it back to the shaft and