ggie, who did not lack ordinary
intelligence, realized. So he strove to think of other things. And the
other things all focussed down upon his Doggie self. And he never knew
what to make of his Doggie self at all. For he would curse the things
that he once loved as being the cause of his inexpiable shame, and at
the same time yearn for them with an agony of longing.

And he would force himself to think of Peggy and her unswerving
loyalty. Of her weekly parcel of dainty food, which had arrived that
morning. Of the joy of Phineas and the disappointment of the
unsophisticated Mo over the _pate de foie gras_. But his mind
wandered back to his Doggie self and its humiliations and its needs
and its yearnings. He welcomed enemy flares and star-shells and
excursions and alarms. They kept him from thinking, enabled him to
pass the time. But in the dead, lonely, silent dark, the hours were
like centuries. He dreaded them.

* * * * *

To-night they fled like minutes. It was a pitch-black night, spitting
fine rain. It was one of Doggie's private grievances that it
invariably rained when he was on sentry duty. One of Heaven's little
ways of strafing him for Doggieism. But to-night he did not heed it.
Often the passage of transport had been a distraction for which he had
longed and which, when it came, was warmly welcome. But to-night,
during his spell, the roadway of the village was as still as death,
and he loved the stillness and the blackness. Once he had welcomed
familiar approaching steps. Now he resented them.

"Who goes there?"

"Rounds."

And the officer, recognized, flashing an electric torch, passed on.
The diminuendo of his footsteps was agreeable to Doggie's ear. The
rain dripped monotonously off his helmet on to his sodden shoulders,
but Doggie did not mind. Now and then he strained an eye upwards to
that part of the living-house that was above the gateway. Little
streaks of light came downwards through the shutter slats. Now it
required no great intellectual effort to surmise that the light
proceeded, not from the bedroom of the invalid Madame Morin, who would
naturally have the best bedroom situated in the comfortable main block
of the house, but from that of somebody else. Madame Morin was
therefore ruled out. So was Toinette--ridiculous to think of her
keeping all night vigil. There remained only Jeanne.

It was supremely silly of him to march with super-martiality of tread
u