‘You haven’t had any bad news, have you?’ Hope asked him.

‘No, Sergeant. Oh, you mean the letter. No, it was only an answer.’

They went off together to the hut used as a company-office and store; and found Corporal Jakes there with Sergeant-Major Tozer. Presently the regimental arrived; and, taking out his jackknife, Bourne drew the cork slowly and softly, Jakes mimicking the sound of it with his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and immediately looking as though he had made a breach of good manners. Bourne paid more attention to the regimental and to Corporal Jakes than to the other two; because apparently the R.S.M. found it a little difficult to throw off a certain presidential air, and Jakes, feeling some constraint, looked rather as though his clothes were too tight. That awkwardness wore off. Some kind of warmth and excitement came into Bourne’s blood as they laughed at his stories.

‘You seem in a pretty good skin tonight,’ said Sergeant-Major Tozer. ‘Well, I suppose you’ll ’ave a lance stripe up tomorrow; an’ then it’ll be good-bye in no time. Funny thing, life. We just sit ’ere an’ talk as though we’d sit ’ere for ever, an’ when one or two ol’ friends drop out, an’ one or two new uns come along, it don’t seem no different some’ow. All the same, I expect we’ll remember you longer’n you’ll remember us.’

‘Damn it,’ said the regimental, very reasonably, ‘you can’t forget a man who finds a bottle O’ Scotch in a place like this.’

‘Have some more, sir? Corporal?’

‘Just a spot more. Merci blow-through,’ said the corporal.

‘I mean we’ll be still ’ere,’ explained Tozer; ‘an’ you’ll be out of it. It won’t seem real to you any longer.’

‘You don’t want to think about things,’ said Corporal Jakes.

They all started talking in a desultory way about the war. The regimental was confident, but had no illusions. It could only end when Germany had been beaten; but the end seemed a long way off yet.

‘I lost my elder boy,’ he said quietly.

Bourne looked at him, at once. Here was a man with a personal feeling against the Hun; and it was curious how seldom one thought of men except as soldiers. One forgot that they were husbands, or fathers, or sons; they were just a lot of anonymous men.

They talked and drank together quietly while the whiskey lasted. It was a break; they became easy, comfortable, friendly with each other, and then they went their several ways to sleep.

Bourne was in orders for a stripe next day, and went to the tailors to get it sewn on his sleeve at once. He gave the tailors some money to wet it.

‘I suppose you’ll be goin’ out on a bit of a spree wi’ the S.M. an’ Sergeant ’ope tonight,’ said Snobby Hines, approvingly.

‘No. I’m going to kip,’ said Bourne. ‘Sergeant Hope’s on guard tonight.’

In the morning Miller, the deserter, had assumed heroic proportions. He was a prisoner in the police tent, right at the edge of a quarry, with three of the police sleeping there and a sentry outside. In the night he had crawled out under the skirt of the tent, and climbed down the quarry in the dark; then he had crept back into the camp and stolen one of the orderlies’ bicycles.