aid the sergeant major. "You brought 'em all
in? That means that no man has fallen out on our first march in this
country."

The corporal made no reply, but later on, he explained the matter to the
sergeant major.

"It's that Sky Pilot of ours, sir," he said. "Blowed if he'd let us fall
out."

"Kept you marching, eh?"

"No, it's his chocolate and his jaw, but more his jaw than his
chocolate. He's got lots of both. I was all in. I'd been sick all day
in the train. Couldn't eat a bite. Well, the first thing, he gives me a
cake of his chocolate. Then he sets himself down in the mud beside me,
and me wishin' all the time he'd go on and leave me for the waggon to
pick up. Then he gives me a cigarette, and then he begins to talk."

"Talk, what about?"

"Damned if I know, but the first thing I knew I was tellin' him about
the broncho bustin',--that's my job, you know--and how I won out from
Nigger Jake in the Calgary Stampede, until I was that stuck on myself
that I said: 'Well, sir, we'd better get a move on,' and up he gets with
my kit-bag on his back. By and by, we picks up another lame duck and
then another, feedin' 'em with chocolate and slingin' his jaw, and when
we was at the limit, he halts us outside one of them stone shacks and
knocks at the door. 'No soldiers here,' snaps the red-headed angel,
shuttin' the door right in his face. Then he opens the door and steps
right in where she could see him, and starts to talk to her, and us
listening out in the rain. Say! In fifteen minutes we was all standin'
up to a feed of coffee and buns, and then he gets Harry Hobbs whistlin'
and singin', and derned if we couldn't have marched to Berlin. Say!
He's a good one, ain't no quitter, and he won't let nobody else be a
quitter."

And thus it came that with Corporal Thom and his derelicts the chaplain
marched into a new place in the esteem of the men of his battalion, and
of its sergeant major.

But of this, of course, Barry had no knowledge. He knew that he had made
some little progress into the confidence of both officers and men in his
battalion. He had made, too, some firm friendships which had relieved,
to a certain extent, the sense of isolation and loneliness that had
made his first months with the battalion so appalling. But there still
remained the sense of failure inasfar as his specific duty as chaplain
was concerned.

The experiences of the first weeks in England only served to deepen in
him the conviction t