ss or a hand-clasp before they were moved on. One wife,
who was little more than a girl, had taken a good place on the edge of
the crowd when her husband's detachment began to file in. I heard her
telling a friend that she had not said good-bye to "her lad," as she
wanted to see the last of him; it had been arranged that she was to be
near when he passed so that he could give her a parting kiss. Oh, how
anxiously she scanned the faces of the men as they swung into sight,
throwing all her soul into her eyes!

Presently, "There he is!" she cried; "here, Jim, I'm here!"

The young man's fine honest face had a look no less intent than hers,
but it was turned away from her; he was searching as eagerly as she, but
on the wrong side of the lane of people; and by one of those impish
tricks that Fate plays upon us in acute moments, he never saw her, nor
heard her voice above the cheers of the people and the blare of the
band. It was a cruel thing; she was fast wedged in the crowd. Someone
ran after the man and told him where she was, but before the sympathiser
could reach him his company had been drawn up and he could not be
allowed to fall out. And long before she was clear of the tightly packed
throng he had passed on to the ship, where she could not follow him.

Another incident of another kind. The North Lancashires were marching
in, and an old man in the crowd was on the look-out for his son. He
explained to everybody near him what a fine boy his son was, and how
keen a soldier; how it had nearly broken the old man's heart that his
boy should leave him and go to the war, but how it would "do un good and
make a mon of un." Presently two soldiers appeared, half-carrying and
half-dragging between them a young man who was so drunk that he could
neither stand nor walk. His helmet was jammed over his eyes, but as he
was dragged past us it fell off and rolled to the old man's feet. I
heard him draw in his breath sharply and murmur something as his face
flushed; and then all the people round began to point and say, "That's
his son there, him that's being carried"; and some--God forgive
them!--laughed and joked at the old man. And he who had a moment ago
filled our ears with the praises of his boy gazed after him with a look
of bitter amazement and then went silently away. Another man who had
missed seeing his wife before he had embarked caught sight of her from
the ship's deck as she stood upon the quay with tears in her eyes. The