ry few officers left behind at the depot were at breakfast when he
arrived to keep Colonel Rattray to his word. Major Earnshaw had very
pleasantly got up from the table to "put him out of his misery" there
and then without formality and had "had a go at this heart of yours" in
the billiard room. Withdrawn his stethoscope and shaken his head. It was
"no go; absolutely none, Sabre."

"Well, but that's for a commission. I'll go into the ranks. Isn't that
any different?"

No different. "You can't possibly go in as you are--now. In time, if
this thing goes on, the standards will probably be reduced. But they'll
have to be reduced a goodish long way before you'll get in, I don't mind
telling you."

Sabre wheeled his bicycle slowly away across the barrack square. "Thank
goodness, I never said anything to Mabel about it." A cluster of young
men of various degrees of life were waiting outside the door of the
recruiting office. The rush of the first few days was thinning down but
recruits were still pouring in. They were all laughing and talking
noisily. He had the wish that he could take the thing in that spirit.
Why couldn't he? After all, what did it really matter that he was not
able to get "in it"? Even if he had been accepted it would only have
been pretending. He never would have got really "in it"; none of those
chaps would; every one knew the war couldn't last long; it would be over
long before any of these recruits could be trained.

VII

This "common sense" argument carried him through following days; then
came another of the frightful undoings of his emotions; and just as the
war definitely began for him with the glimpse of the beginnings of that
"jamborino" in the Mess, so from this new occasion began, unceasingly
and increasingly, and with shocking effect upon his sensitiveness, a
dreadful oppression by the war and, adding to its darkness, a gnawing
and unreasonable self-accusation that he was not "in it."

The occasion was that of his meeting with Harkness outside the _County
Times_ office. Harkness was a captain of the battalion that had gone out
who had been left behind owing to some illness. The British
Expeditionary Force had been in action. There had been scraps of news of
some heavy fighting. Harkness said dully, "Hullo, Sabre. I've just been
in to see that chap Pike to see if he'd got anything. We've had some
news, you know." He stopped. His face was twitching.

Sabre said, "News? Anything about th