.. you're a jolly good
soldier, Hamilton--how do you feel about it all?"

Hamilton shrugged his shoulders.

"They would have taken me for the Cameroons, but somebody had to stay,"
he said quietly. "After all, it is one's business to ... to do one's job
in the station of life to which it has pleased God to call him. This is
my work ... here."

Sanders laid his hand on the other's shoulder.

"That's the game as it should be played," he said, and his blue eyes
were as soft and as tender as a woman's. "There is no war here--we are
the keepers of the King's peace, Hamilton."

"It's rotten...."

"I know--I feel that way myself. We're out of it--the glory of it--the
chance of it--the tragedy of it. And there are others. Think of the men
in India eating their hearts out ... praying for the order that will
carry them from the comfort of their lives to the misery and the
death--and the splendour, I grant you--of war."

He sighed and looked wistfully to the blue sea.

Hamilton beckoned a Houssa corporal who was crossing the garden of the
Residency.

"Ho, Mustaf," he said, in his queer coast Arabic, "where shall I look
for my lord Tibbetti?"

The corporal turned and pointed to the woods which begin at the back of
the Residency and carry without a break for three hundred miles.

"Lord, he went there carrying many strange things--also there went with
him Ali Abid, his servant."

Hamilton reached through an open window of the bungalow and fished out
his helmet with his walking-stick.

"We'll find Bones," he said grimly; "he's been gone three hours and he's
had time to re-plan Verdun."

It took some time to discover the working party, but when it was found
the trouble was well repaid.

Bones was stretched on a canvas chair under the shade of a big Isisi
palm. His helmet was tipped forward so that the brim rested on the
bridge of his nose, his thin red arms were folded on his breast, and
their gentle rise and fall testified to his shame. Two pegs had been
driven in, and between them a string sagged half-heartedly.

Curled up under a near-by bush was, presumably, Ali Abid--presumably,
because all that was visible was a very broad stretch of brown satin
skin which showed between the waistline of a pair of white cotton
trousers and a duck jacket.

They looked down at the unconscious Bones for a long time in silence.

"What will he say when I kick him?" asked Hamilton. "You can have the
first guess."

Sanders frown