heavy sleep, to see to
where he had come. He was in the narrow old ways of Tidborough Old Town,
approaching The Precincts, by the ancient Corn Exchange. A keen-looking
young man, particularly well set up and wearing nice tweeds, was
accosting him. Sabre recognised Otway, captain and adjutant of the
depot, up at the barracks, of the county regiment, one of the crack
regiments, famous as "The Pinks."

Otway said, "Hullo, Sabre. How goes it? Are you going to this show
to-morrow?"

He was pointing with his stick to a poster displayed against the Corn
Exchange. Sabre read it. It announced that Field Marshal Lord Roberts
was speaking there, under the auspices of the National Service League,
on Home Defence--a Citizen Army.

"I hadn't thought about going," Sabre said. He wanted to get away.

Otway was staring at the poster as though he had never seen it before;
but he had been staring at it when Sabre came along the street. "You
ought to," Otway said. "You ought to hear old Bobs. Of course the little
chap's all wrong."

He seemed to be talking to himself, staring at the poster, more than to
Sabre. Sabre, despite his preoccupation, was surprised. "All wrong? Good
lord, I should have thought you of all people--" And immediately a
torrent of Otway was let loose upon him, bursting into his thoughts like
a stone chucked through a study window.

Otway spun around in his keen, quick way to face him. "All wrong in the
way he's putting his case, I mean. All these National Service chaps are.
Home defence they talk about, nothing but Home Defence. It's like
chucking sawdust into a fire--the fire being all the bloody fools who
are opposed to military training. Any fool can knock the bottom out of
this Home Defence business. The Blue Water fools are champions at it.
They say the only defence against invasion is the Navy and that half a
million spent on the Navy is worth untold millions chucked away on this
'Nation in Arms' shout. And they're damn right."

"Well, then?" said Sabre. "What's the argument? What's the harm in
knocking the bottom out of--this?" he nodded towards the poster.

Otway spoke with astonishing intensity. "Why, good God alive, man, don't
you see, we do want a nation in arms; we want it like hell. But we don't
want it for here, at home; we want it to fight on the Continent. That's
where we've got to fight,--out there. And that's where we're _going_ to
fight before we're many years older."

In his intensity he