as, who listened
sympathetically. Such a cheery comrade, such a smart soldier, such a
kindly soul.

"Not a black spot in him," said Doggie.

"A year ago, laddie," said McPhail, "what would have been your opinion
of a bookmaker's clerk?"

"I know," replied Doggie. "But this isn't a year ago. Just look
round."

He laughed somewhat hysterically, for the fate of Taffy had unstrung
him for the time. Phineas contemplated the length of deep narrow
ditch, with its planks half swimming on filthy liquid, its wire
revetment holding up the oozing sides, the dingy parapet above which
it was death to put one's head, the grey free sky, the only thing free
along that awful row of parallel ditches that stretched from the
Belgian coast to Switzerland, the clay-covered, shapeless figures of
men, their fellows, almost undistinguishable even by features from
themselves.

"It has been borne upon me lately," said Phineas, "that patriotism is
an amazing virtue."

Doggie drew a foot out of the mud so as to find a less precarious
purchase higher up the slope.

"And I've been thinking, Phineas, whether it's really patriotism that
has brought you and me into this--what can we call it? Dante's Inferno
is child's play to it."

"Dante had no more imagination," said Phineas, "than a Free Kirk
precentor in Kirkcudbright."

"But is it patriotism?" Doggie persisted. "If I thought it was, I
should be happier. If we had orders to go over the top and attack and
I could shout 'England for ever!' and lose myself just in the thick of
it----"

"There's a brass hat coming down the trench," said Phineas, "and brass
hats have no use for rhapsodical privates."

They stood to attention as the staff officer passed by. Then Doggie
broke in impatiently:

"I wish to goodness you could understand what I'm trying to get at."

A smile illuminated the gaunt, unshaven, mud-caked face of Phineas
McPhail.

"Laddie," said he, "let England, as an abstraction, fend for itself.
But you've a bonny English soul within you, and for that you are
fighting. And so had poor Taffy Jones. And I have a bonny Scottish
thirst, the poignancy of which both of you have been happily spared. I
will leave you, laddie, to seek in slumber a surcease from martyrdom."

* * * * *

Doggie had been out a long time. He had seen many places, much
fighting and endured manifold miseries. After one of the spells in the
trenches, the worst he had experience