then set. That was all that ever happened. The coming
of a cloud into the sky would have been greeted with cheers. No cloud
appeared A sandstorm, however disagreeable, would have been welcomed as
a change. The sand stayed quietly where it was. The men tried football,
and gave it up because of the blistering heat. They played "House" until
even the excitement of that mild gamble exhausted itself. No other form
of amusement suggested itself. There was not even any work to do. Had
the battalion belonged to the Brigade of Guards it would no doubt have
gone on doing barrack-square drill every day and all day long until the
men learned to move like parts of a machine. But this was a Territorial
battalion, and the colonel held reasonable views about modern warfare.
The value of drill, a mechanical business, was in his opinion easily
exaggerated. Had the battalion belonged to an Irish regiment there
would probably have been several interesting fights and some means of
obtaining whisky would have been devised. In such ways the men would
have escaped the curse of monotony, and the officers would have been
kept busy in the orderly room. But this battalion came from the
English Midlands. The men did not want to fight each other, and had no
overpowering desire to get drunk. When the morning parades were
over they lay in their tents and grumbled peacefully. Under such
circumstances tempers often wear thin, and a habit of bickering takes
possession of a mess. It is greatly to the credit of everyone concerned
that there was no sign of bad temper among the officers of the
battalion. The colonel lived a good deal by himself in his tent, but was
always quietly good-humoured. Lieutenant Dalton, an incurably merry boy,
kept the other subalterns cheerful. Only Captain Maitland was inclined
to complain a little, and he had a special grievance, an excuse which
justified a certain amount of grumbling. He slept badly at night, and
liked to read a book of some sort after he went to bed. The mess had
originally possessed an excellent supply of books, some hundred volumes
of the most varied kind supplied by the Camps Libraries' Association at
home. Unfortunately, almost all the books were left behind when the
move was made. Only three volumes were to be found in the new camp--one
novel, a treatise on the culture of apple trees, and Mallory's "Morte
D'Arthur."

Captain Maitland blamed the chaplain for the loss.

"You ought to have looked after thos