ou can keep on getting clean socks every--I'm going to
stuff in socks enough to last me--"[1]

[Footnote 1: A very short time afterwards, while the incident was fresh
in his memory, Sabre heard that Sikes took out eleven pairs of socks and
was killed, at Mons, in the pair he landed in.]

II

The blessed gift in the war was to be without imagination. The supreme
trial, whether in endurance on the part of those who stayed at home, or
in courage on the part of those who took the field, was upon those whose
mentality invested every sight and every happening with the poignancy of
attributes not present but imagined. For Sabre the war definitely began
with that visit to the Mess on the eve of the Pinks' departure. The high
excitement of the young men, their eager planning, the almost religious
ecstasy of Otway at the consummation of his life's dream, moved Sabre,
visioning what might await it all, in depths profound and painful in
their intensity. His mind would not abandon them. He sat up that night
after Mabel had gone to her room. How on earth could he go to bed, be
hoggishly sleeping, while those chaps were marching out?

He could not. At two in the morning he went quietly from the house and
got out his bicycle and rode down into Tidborough.

He was just in time. The news had been well kept, or in those early days
had not the meaning it came to have. Nevertheless a few people stood
about the High Street in the thin light of the young morning, and when,
almost immediately, the battalion came swinging out of the Market Place,
many appeared flanking it, mostly women.

"Here they come!"

Frightful words! Sabre caught them from a young woman spoken to a very
old woman whose arm she held a few paces from where he stood. Frightful
words! He caught his breath, and, more dreadfully upon his emotions, as
the head of the column came into sight, the band, taking them to the
station, burst into the Pinks' familiar quickstep.

The Camp Town races are five miles long,
Doo-da! Doo-da!
The Camp Town races are five miles long,
Doo-da! Doo-da! Day!
Gwine to run all night. Gwine to run all day.
I bet my money on the bob-tail nag,
Somebody bet on the bay!

He never in his life had experienced anything so utterly frightful or
imagined that anything could be so utterly frightful. His throat felt
bursting. His eyes were filled. They were swinging past him