r papers and laid down their cigarettes. The
Turco--"Muley Hafid" he was called, because those were the only words of
his any one could understand--who had been deploying imaginary troops,
with the aid of matches, upon the counterpane, as though he were a sick
child playing with leaden soldiers, recognised the tune, and in default
of words began to beat time with a soup spoon. Up and down the passage
way between the beds marched the fife and drum; louder beat the drum,
more piercing grew the fife. What delirious joy-of-battle, what poignant
cries of anguish, has not that immortal music both stirred and soothed!
To what supremacy of effort has it not incited? It has succoured dying
men with its _viaticum_. It has brought fire to glazing eyes. It has
exalted men a little higher than the angels, it has won the angels to
the side of men:

Tout est soldat pour vous combattre:
S'ils tombent, nos jeunes heros,
La terre en produit de nouveaux
Contre vous tout prets a se battre.
Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos bataillons:
Marchons, qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons.

As I gently closed the door of the ward and stole out into the corridor
on tip-toe, I heard again the martial chorus swelling into a tumult of
joy:

Le jour de gloire est arrive!

It was the note of the conqueror.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] German swine! Stinking Prussians!

[11] You speak German!

[12] Yes, I can no other, more's the pity!

XVI

PETER

My friend T---- and myself were smoking a pipe after dinner in his
sitting-room at the Base. He was a staff-captain who had done his term
as a "Political" in India, and had now taken on an Army job of a highly
confidential nature. He was one of those men who, when they make up
their minds to give you their friendship, give it handsomely and without
reserve, and in a few weeks we had got on to the plane of friends of
many years. As we talked we suddenly heard the sound of many feet on the
cobbles of the street below, a street which ran up the side of the hill
like a gully--between tall houses standing so close together that one
might almost have shaken hands with the inmates of the houses opposite.
The rhythm of that tramp, tramp, tramp, in spite of the occasional
slipping of one or another man's boots upon the greasy and precipitous
stones, was unmistakable.

"New drafts!" said T----. Instinctively we both moved to the window. We
knew that the Ar