that he was forced to hold
his sides. The exhibition took Nicky-Nan right aback. He could but
stand and stare.

"Oh, oh!" panted the corporal. After another paroxysm he gasped,
"You'll excuse me, but that's how I get taken. 'You've got no
business here' was your words." (Another paroxysm.) "You can't
think how comical you said it, either."

"Comical or not, I mean it," Nicky-Nan assured him, with a saturnine
frown. "If you can give over holdin' your belly an' listen, I don't
mind tellin' you my opinion o' this here War; which is, that 'tis a
put-up job from start to finish, with no other object than to annoy
folks."

The corporal sat up, wiping his eyes. "That's a point o' voo," he
admitted, and added guardedly, "I don't say as I agree: but I'd like
to know how, comin' upon all of us so suddent, it strikes a man like
you, dwellin' in these out-o'-the-way parts. My wife declares she've
seen matters workin' up to it for years."

"I never thought about it, one way or t'other, an' I don't want to
think about it now. Who in the world _wants_ war? Not I, for one."

"Me either, if it comes to that," Corporal Sandercock allowed,
refilling his pipe. "If the matter had rested with me, I'd ha' gone
on forming fours every Wednesday an' Saturday, contented enough, all
the rest o' my life. But the great ones of earth will have it, the
Kaiser especially: and, after that, there's no more to say.
The Kaiser wants a place in the sun, as he puts it; an' 'tis our
bounden duty as true Britons to see he don't get any such thing."

"I never heard tell as he expressed a hankerin' for my 'taty-patch,"
answered Nicky Nan sourly. "The way I look at it is, _he_ leaves me
alone in quiet, an' you don't. A pack o' sojers messin' about a spot
like this!" he added with scorn. "It affronts a decent man's
understandin'. But 'tis always the same wi' sojers. In the Navy,
when I belonged it, we had a sayin'--'A messmate afore a ship-mate, a
ship mate afore a dog, an' a dog afore a sojer.'"

"To judge by your appearance," said the corporal with no sign of
umbrage, "that was some time ago, afore they started the Territorial
movement. . . . Ever study what they call Stradegy? No?--I thought
not. Stradegy means that down below your patch there's a cove o'
sorts: where there's a cove there's a landin'-place; where you can
get a light gun ashore you can clear the shore till you find a spot
to land heavy guns. Once you've landed heav