ast
of all--culminating pleasure of heaven--his red bedroom, with the sheets
ready turned down for him, soft and white and alluring. That would have
been heaven.

But this heaven of his was very far away from the hard dusty road and
the eternal poplars! With a painful jolt his thoughts would return to
the realities of life; he would feel dazed and annoyed, and in his heart
of hearts he wanted to cry.

* * * * *

Sir Archibald Murray passed in a car, holding an animated conversation
with a much-beribboned and distinguished-looking French General. He
looked very pleased with himself, as well he might, for the greatest
work of his career had begun the day before with astounding success.

The Subaltern must have felt very tired and dissatisfied that afternoon.
Having exhausted the painful thoughts of home, he began to tell himself
what an awful life Active Service was. It never occurred to him to be
thankful that a youth so young should have the luck to play his part in
such tremendous events. He did not at the time realise that there were
thousands of adventurous souls at home who would have given an arm to
have been where he had been.

He did not realise that in after days the memory of every weary hour of
trudging, of every bullet that had hummed by, and of every shell that
had burst, would be a joy for ever. The thought had never struck any of
them, unsentimental souls!

At this point his memory confessedly breaks down. He remembers perfectly
a certain "ten minutes' halt" spent in the shade of a sheaf of corn. He
remembers plunging into a pine forest; but thenceforward there is a
blank. His memory snaps. He cannot recollect passing through that wood,
much less passing out of it. A link in the chain of his memory must have
snapped.

When next he recollects anything clearly it may have been that night,
the next night, or the night after that. Anyway, it was very dark, and
the Battalion was eventually halted in an open field. Somehow or other,
straw was procured for the rest, but his own Platoon was sent forward to
hold an outpost position along the banks of a small stream.

Although in the daytime the sun shone with undiminished fervour, the
nights were getting certainly far more chilly than they had been in
August. But when one has to get up at daybreak, having never had more
than four hours sleep, one does not notice it much.

During the night a fresh draft arrived.

The next