is manner, a little "fey." He
was annoyed with three of his officers who had come back late from three
days' Paris leave. They were giants, but stood like schoolboys before
their master while he spoke ironical, bitter words. Later in the evening
he mentioned casually that they must prepare to go into the line
again under special orders. What about the store of bombs, small-arms
ammunition, machine-guns?

The officers were stricken into silence. They stared at one another as
though to say: "What does the old man mean? Is this true?" One of them
became rather pale, and there was a look of tragic resignation in his
eyes. Another said, "Hell!" in a whisper. The adjutant answered the
colonel's questions in a formal way, but thinking hard and studying the
colonel's face anxiously.

"Do you mean to say we are going into the line again, sir? At once?"

The colonel laughed.

"Don't look so scared, all of you! It's only a field-day for training."

The officers of the Gordons breathed more freely. Poof! They had been
fairly taken in by the "old man's" leg-pulling... No, it was clear
they did not find any real joy in the line. They would not choose a
front-line trench as the most desirable place of residence.

XVI

In queer psychology there was a strange mingling of the pitiful and
comic--among a division (the 35th) known as the Bantams. They were all
volunteers, having been rejected by the ordinary recruiting-officer on
account of their diminutive stature, which was on an average five feet
high, descending to four feet six. Most of them came from Lancashire,
Cheshire, Durham, and Glasgow, being the dwarfed children of industrial
England and its mid-Victorian cruelties. Others were from London, banded
together in a battalion of the Middlesex Regiment. They gave a shock
to our French friends when they arrived as a division at the port of
Boulogne.

"Name of a dog!" said the quayside loungers. "England is truly in a bad
way. She is sending out her last reserves!"

"But they are the soldiers of Lilliput!" exclaimed others.

"It is terrible that they should send these little ones," said
kind-hearted fishwives.

Under the training of General Pi, who commanded them, they became smart
and brisk in the ranks. They saluted like miniature Guardsmen, marched
with quick little steps like clockwork soldiers. It was comical to see
them strutting up and down as sentries outside divisional headquarters,
with their bayonets hi