ly as a divine institution. No one else took
Maitland seriously. It was felt that when the war came to an end--if
it ever did--he would go back to horse-racing and leave the scientific
aspects of marriage in decent obscurity.

When he had finished the novel he took the book on apple trees to bed
with him. He became, after a short time, interested in that subject. He
announced that when the war was over he intended to buy a small place in
Devonshire and go in for orchards.

"Apple growing," he said, "is just exactly the peaceable, shady kind of
life a man wants after being stuck down in a desert like this."

"With your taste for the turf," said Dalton, "you'll get into a shady
kind of life all right, whether you plant apple trees or not."

Dalton was an irreverent boy. Haddingly was greatly pleased at the
thought of Maitland sitting innocently under an apple tree.

The turn of Mallory came next Maitland left it for the last because the
print was very small and the only light in his tent was a feeble candle.
When he got fairly started in the book he became profoundly interested,
and the other members of the mess were treated at breakfast time to a
good deal of information about medieval warfare.

"As far as I can make out," Maitland said, "every officer in those days
was knighted as soon as he got his commission."

"Jolly good idea," said Dalton. "I should buck about like anything if
they made me a K.C.B."

"You wouldn't have been an officer or a knight," said Maitland. "You'd
have been the court fool. You've no idea whatever of chivalry."

Like most simple men who read very little, Maitland took the books he
did read seriously and was greatly influenced by them. The apple tree
treatise made him want to be a gardener. A slow and careful study of
Mallory filled him with a profound admiration for medieval romance.

"The reason modern war is such a sordid business," he said, "is that
we've lost the idea of chivalry."

"Chivalry is all very well," said Dalton, "if there's anyone to chival
about. I haven't read much about those old knights of yours, Maitland;
but so far as I can make out from what you tell us they were always
coming across damsels, fair, distressed, and otherwise fetching. Now,
I haven't seen a damsel since I left England. How the deuce can I be
chivalrous? I defy anyone, even that Lancelot blighter of yours, to go
into raptures about the old hag you turned out of the camp yesterday for
selling rot