The caterpillar continued its muffled clanking along the road, and the wood filled with low voices, as the men, laughing in the darkness, turned back up the slope to their dimly lighted tents. Bourne, who had lost Shem and Martlow in the downward rush, found himself beside Sergeant Morgan, the bombing sergeant, who for some little time past had nodded to him in a friendly way when they met, and then by degrees had come to know him better. He was a very decent, cheerful man. As they walked up the hill together, they came up with the regimental, to whom Bourne had scarcely spoken since they were at Beaumetz.

‘Hullo, Bourne; it’s a bloody long time since I’ve seen anything of you. How do you like sigs? Come along to my tent for a while, and have a yarn. I hear you are going in for a commission.’

Sergeant Morgan, saying good night, disappeared into the darkness between the trees, and Bourne followed the regimental to his tent, which was at the top of the wood, a little apart from the others. A hurricane lamp burned low in it, and there was no one else there but Barton, the regimental’s batman, whom Bourne liked, knowing as he did that, but for Barton’s careful shepherding, the regimental might have been in serious trouble recently, on one or two occasions. They sat and talked of the prospects of the show for a few minutes; and the regimental told him that they were going out to practise it in the morning with the rest of the Brigade, over some ground which had been taped out. A field day with the Divisional General, and most of his gilded staff. There would be a good deal of wind up before it was over.

‘I’m laughing,’ said the regimental; ‘my job will be with the ammunition column.’

‘You may get it in the neck there, as well as anywhere else,’ said Bourne, in a matter-of-fact way.

Barton went off on his own private affairs, and the other two talked in a desultory way, like men who have nothing much to say, but talk for the sake of company.

‘You don’t seem to be in a very good skin tonight,’ said Bourne at last. ‘What’s the matter? Has the Colonel been getting wind up about the practice tomorrow?’

‘The Colonel’s a bloody soldier, an’ don’t you forget it,’ said the regimental, with an honest appreciation. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I’m bloody well fed up with it.’

‘You ought to take a pull on yourself,’ said Bourne, as though he were talking of the weather. ‘You have been inclined to run off the rails ever since we were at Mazingarbe.’

‘That’s all a bloody tale….’

‘I didn’t suppose it was all true,’ said Bourne, quietly; ‘but you were canned-up, and you never know what you’re doing when you’re canned. You’ve been right enough since we left Noeux-les-Mines, and you ought to keep right now. I should be sorry if you made a mess of things. There are some who would be pleased, and you give them an opening…’