orders sound as crisp as that. We shoulder arms as smartly as if we were moving out on parade.

"Form sections! Right about turn! Quick march!"

And we swing round smartly in four at the command.

"Fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth company!" shouts the Major, who has pulled up in the middle of the yard.

We are the eighth company, and are following on the heels of the seventh. The gates of the barrack-yard are open. We are marching out. Our legs mark time on the pavement of the street in the goose-step of grand parade.

"March at ease!"

And the muscles of our legs relax and advance at more natural gait.

The streets are full of people. They are lining the pavement on both sides and watching us march past. Though it is still quite an early hour of the morning, yet the whole town is up and about. They weren't able to stay abed. They wanted to see the soldiers march out.

And they welcome us with their eyes and wave their hands to us.

A fifteen-year-old lad is running along beside us. His brother is marching in our file.

"Mother sends you her love; she says she is feeling better again—but she wasn't well enough to get up yet, else she'd have come with me this morning—but I was to give you this from her."

And the lad stretches his open hand out to his brother, and tries to hand him something wrapped up in paper—money! But the elder brother waves it aside.

"Put it away. Tell her I said she was to spend it on herself, and to look after herself properly, and be well and fit when we come back again."

Reluctantly the lad puts the money in his pocket.

A little ahead of us a young woman is tripping alongside. We have set a pretty smart pace, and she has to break into a run to keep up. But though her feet may stumble over the uneven pavement she never turns her eyes from her husband. What they may have to say to each other at the very last moment we can't catch. But we catch the expression of her face, and her comically touching devotion.

And now the crowds accompanying their soldiers through the streets become denser and denser. A few folk who are seeing members of their family off are running beside every section. White-haired fathers and mothers, with anxious looks, sisters, sweethearts, wives.

There is one among them of whom you can tell at a glance that she is about to become a mother. Well, she will be brought to bed lonely and desolate.

The man marching on my right, a taciturn yokel, who until now has been staring gloomily straight ahead of him, half turns to me.

"How many kids are there under way that'll never come to see their dads?"

And then he thaws, and begins to talk about his brother, who had to leave with the Army Service Corps two days before, and he was called on the Colors the very same day his wife was brought to bed, so that he had to leave her before she was out of the wood.

"Almost make you think us wasn't human beings."

The drums and fifes strike up briskly, and play a merry march.

Some one or other, somewhere in the crowd, sets up a loud, crowing sort of cheer.

"Hip! hip! hooray!"

And the others join in. It spreads all down the whole length of the street, and does not die down again. But it leaves my yokel unmoved.

"What's the good of that how-d'ye-do? Folks are fair crazed. There is no sense in it."

I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. He is impenetrably rapt in his own gloomy reflections. Then he begins again.

"Ah've left a wife and three kids to home. They're to get a few pence a day, the lot, and nought more. And that's what four people have got to live on."

Some one tries to cheer him up.

"Then some one else'll turn up who'll look after 'em!"

"What others?" comes the answer in a deep growl. "They'll have their hands full looking after theirselves. By the time I get home they'll have kicked the bucket, the whole lot of 'em. The best thing'd be never to come home no more."

Then the big drum breaks into his com-plaint. A dull reverberating throb. It is to usher in the regimental band, and orders the drums and the fifes to desist.

And then again, deep and monitory.

Boom!

The pipers begin to play the regimental march.

And now—the regimental band strikes up. You may kick against it as you will. The martial strain infects the excited streets, trumpets back from a wall of houses, stirs the blood so joyously, and exorcises the spectres of the night from your brain. Your muscles stiffen, you throw your head up, and your legs strut along proudly to keep step and time. And the rhythm of step and time infects the whole crowd. The effect on the crowd is electric. They are waving their hands from the pavements; they are waving their hands from the windows; they are waving their hands from the balconies. The air is white with pocket-handkerchiefs. And now some one in front begins to sing. They are shouting and singing against one another. The tune gains strength until it has fought its way through, and swirls above our heads like the wind before a storm.

The National Anthem!

The whole street is taking it up.

The regimental band has capitulated to the song that carries every one away with it. And then it solemnly joins in.

The crowds bare their heads. We can see nothing except glowing faces, figures marching under a spell, a nation afire and kindled to enthusiasm.

We march through the town singing ecstatically until we reach the station, until we at length come to a standstill on the platform reserved for us. The train is already standing there.

The bridge, beyond, leading over the rails is black with people shouting and waving down to us.

We are already told off.

Eight men to the compartment.

"Tara, tata!" The bugle calls us to entrain, and the doors are thrown open. We have scarcely stacked our packs and rifles, and donned our caps when the engine starts, and amid thunderous cheers we slide out of the station, and leave behind us a distant, fading roar, a dying hum—the town shouting her last farewell to her soldiers.

We make ourselves comfortable. We are sitting and smoking our pipes. Three, unable to change all at once, have already started a game of cards. Two more are sitting in the corner and putting their heads together. The yokel is by himself, and shows no interest in anything.

I am looking out of the window, watching the landscape fly past my eyes. The rejoicings are still hot in my blood. I have lived to see a great day. Wherever the bulk of the people rises above the dust of every day it becomes irresistible, and carries away with it even the man who would fain stand aloof, and keep his head cool.

And we hurry past forests and rivers, past meadows whose extent I cannot see, past hills that fade away into the blue of distance, past an immeasurably rich country that stands golden in its ears of corn.

And over it all shines the sun of one's native land.

And I would fain spread out my arms.

Yes, our native land is fair and great, and worthy that a man should shed his blood for it.

CHAPTER VI

LIKE THE PROMISE OF MAY

We have turned off the main road, and have to march over a field of stubble. A battle was fought here yesterday, for the field is sown with dead bodies. They have picked up the wounded. But as yet they have had no time to bury those who died where they fell.

The first dead man we saw struck us dumb. At first we hardly realized what it meant—this lifeless new uniform spread out there—from the way he was lying you could hardly believe he was really dead. It gave you a prickly feeling on the tongue. It seemed as if you were on manoeuvres, and the fellow lying there in a ditch had got a touch of the sun. A rough soldierly jest, a cheery shout was all that was wanted to raise him to his ramshackle legs.

"Hullo, you! Got a head? Keep a stiff neck."