The rain cleared away that night, and they marched all the following day, and the day after, chasing sky-lines. There were occasional showers, but only enough to lay the dust a little. On the evening of the second day the company were billeted in a village apart from the rest of the battalion, which was at Reclinghem: Vincly, Bourne thought, was the name. He was at a farm on the outskirts of the village, where there were only two old men, a thin bent old woman whom life had long since ceased to surprise, and a boy. When they had settled in, Corporal Marshall came up to Bourne, and said, anxiously, but unofficially, that he wanted his help.

‘That Lance-Corporal Miller is my prisoner, an’ I’m responsible for ’im. ’e’s not to be shot anyway, Captain Malet an’ the chaplain worked tooth an’ nail to get him off, an’ the sentence will be promulgated later; so they’ve given the bugger to me to mind. ’e ought to be wi’ the police; but ’e’s under a kind of open arrest, on parole you might say. I don’t trust ’im.’

Bourne gave the other man, standing a few yards away, a brief glance, and decided he didn’t trust him either. He had a weak, mean, and cunning face; but there was something so abject in his humiliation, that one felt for him the kind of pity which can scarcely tolerate its own object. It might be I, one felt involuntarily, and the thought made one almost merciless towards the man who carried with him the contagion of fear.

‘What will you do if he tries to do a bunk again?’ Bourne asked.

‘Shoot the bugger,’ said Marshall, whitening to the lips. ‘By God, if he tries that game on me I won’t give ’im a dog’s chance.’

‘All right,’ said Bourne, in a quiet matter-of-fact voice. ‘Don’t get windy. I can’t take any of your responsibility, but I shall see he doesn’t let you down if I can help it, Corporal. He had better sleep between us, because I wake easily. Only I shall have to explain to Shem and Martlow. I’ll shift my corner, and then we shall not have to shift them.’

‘Jakes will be sleepin’ ’ere too, but ’e sleeps like a log,’ said Marshall, partly reassured. ‘I’ll be bloody glad when they sentence ’im, I can tell you. Why the ’ell can’t they do the thing quick, instead of puttin’ it all on us? You ’elp me, an’ I won’t forget it, see.’

Probably the unfortunate man knew they were speaking of him, for Bourne, glancing once again in his direction, saw him looking at them narrowly, his mouth half-open with a foolish grin. After Bourne had recovered from that instant wave of pity and repulsion, he became more and more indifferent to him. Miller would have been completely irrelevant, but for the fact that he was a nuisance. He would be better dead, and then a man’s riddling conscience would ask no more questions about him: one felt even a little impatient at the thought of a court-martial and a firing-party, senseless parades clothed in the forms of law. To keep him like this, exhibiting him to the battalion, was not a warning or a deterrent to other men: it merely vexed them. He should have been killed cursorily: but as they evidently did not intend to kill him, he should have been sent away. He was no longer a man to them: he was a ghost who unfortunately hadn’t died.