razy about
him exactly, but that fiddle of his had got them goin'. 'Twasn't only
the fiddle he played on, either. Anything would do. That there chap
could play you into any kind of dashed mood he liked and out of it
again. Put more pep into you with a penny whistle than Sousy's band or
a bottle of rum. Ring you out like a dishrag, he could, and hang you
out to dry. Gee! He could do anything--just anything!"

(It was here that the bun episode occurred.)

"Well,--he got buried. Parapet blown in. And when they got him out he
was--hurt some." (The Sergeant remembered that one must not shock the
ladies.)

"That was all I would have known about it," he went on, "only we happen
to turn up in hospital together. I wakes up one mornin' and finds him
in the next cot. He was supposed to be recoverin' but was somehow
botchin' the job.

"'Where's the fiddle?' I says to him one day when I was feelin' social.
And then, all of a minute, I guessed why he wasn't patchin' up like
what was his duty. You see, that b-blessed parapet hadn't had any more
sense than to go and spoil his right arm for him--the one he fiddled
with, see?"

(Here the Sergeant delivered one brick loaf instead of two sandwich
ditto.)

"Well, they kept sayin' there weren't any reason he shouldn't mend up.
But he didn't. And one night--" the Sergeant pulled up the cart so
quickly that Desire almost fell out of it. "You won't believe this
part," he said in a kind of shamefaced way.

"Try me."

"Well then, one night he called to me in a kind of clear whisper.
'Bob!' he says, 'I've got my fiddle!'

"'Sure you have, old cock,' says I.

"'And my arm's as good as ever,' says he.

"'Sure it is! Better,' says I.

"'Listen!' says he.

"And I listened and--but you won't believe this part--"

"I will."

"Well, I heared him playin'! Not loud--not very near but so clear not
one of the littlest, tinkly notes was lost. I never heard playin' like
that--no, mam! And the ward was still. I never heard the ward still,
like that. I think I went to sleep listenin'. I don't know."

The Sergeant broke off here long enough to deliver several orders--all
wrong. Desire waited quietly and presently he finished with a jerk.

"When I woke up in the mornin', I was feelin' fine--fine. The first
thing I did was to look over to the next cot. But there was a screen
around it.... I ain't told the story to his folks because he hasn't
got any," he added after a pause. "And I kind of t