tform black-smudged by drizzling rain, in the middle of a sheet of
mist which was torn by blasts of distant whistling. Disinterred from
the carriages, our shadows heaped themselves there and waited, like
bales of goods in the dawn's winter.

Adjutant Marcassin, who had gone in quest of instructions, returned at
last. "It's that way."

He formed us in fours. "Forward! Straighten up! Keep step! Look as
if you had something about you."

The rhythm of the step pulled at our feet and dovetailed us together.
The adjutant marched apart along the little column. Questioned by one
of us who knew him intimately, he made no reply. From time to time he
threw a quick glance, like the flick of a whip, to make sure that we
were in step.

I thought I was going again to the old barracks, where I did my term of
service, but I had a sadder disappointment than was reasonable. Across
some land where building was going on, deeply trenched, beplastered and
soiled with white, we arrived at a new barracks, sinisterly white in a
velvet pall of fog. In front of the freshly painted gate there was
already a crowd of men like us, clothed in subdued civilian hues in the
coppered dust of the first rays of day.

They made us sit on forms round the guard room. We waited there all
the day. As the scorching sun went round it forced us to change our
places several times. We ate with our knees for tables, and as I undid
the little parcels that Marie had made, it seemed to me that I was
touching her hands. When the evening had fallen, a passing officer
noticed us, made inquiries, and we were mustered. We plunged into the
night of the building. Our feet stumbled and climbed helter-skelter,
between pitched walls up the steps of a damp staircase, which smelt of
stale tobacco and gas-tar, like all barracks. They led us into a dark
corridor, pierced by little pale blue windows, where draughts came and
went violently, a corridor spotted at each end by naked gas-jets, their
flames buffeted and snarling.

A lighted doorway was stoppered by a throng--the store-room. I ended
by getting in in my turn, thanks to the pressure of the compact file
which followed me, and pushed me like a spiral spring. Some barrack
sergeants were exerting themselves authoritatively among piles of
new-smelling clothes, of caps and glittering equipment. Geared into
the jerky hustle from which we detached ourselves one by one, I made
the tour of the place, and came ou