tic grunted.

"Fetish," he observed quietly, "the warrior appealing to his oracle of
Delphi like a savage to his moon. Passing gods of a passing
generation...."

"Yesh," Duquemin agreed sagely. "Passin' gen'ral rashon--no
rashon-hic-pore-Guernseys. Oonly wot people gi'...."

The friendship originated during the Normans' first night at Vorchocq
with the French grew as the days progressed, accentuated by the Norman
knowledge of the people's mother-tongue.

They made the utmost of their time, lived life to the very full,
inspired by the knowledge that the draft of four hundred Staffords and
two hundred or so Guernseymen (the ten per cent. who had not
participated at Cambrai) who were to become absorbed into the Ten
Hundred were auguries of an approaching further acquaintance with the
Front Line.

Christmas Day provided an ample fare in addition to the ordinary
rations, small parties engaging rooms in estaminets and farms,
purchasing the very limit of eatables obtainable with what financial
lengths were at their disposal, obtained bottles of port and gave vent
to an unbounded vein of hilarious humour and uproarious chorus in
celebration of a Christmas that many knew would be their last.

In a quiet room four of the ascetic rankers (Clarke, Martel, Lomar and
White) passed an evening that will long remain a pleasant memory,
tempered with pain for the one who soon afterwards paid the Supreme
Sacrifice.

Everywhere uproar was rampant. Light, laughter, and good cheer
maintained undisputed sway upon all. Rose-cheeked daughters of France
were toasted again and again, taken into muscular arms and kissed times
without number.

The old marching rallies of the Ten Hundred were roared out from every
tiny house ablaze with light, echoed out into the inscrutable pall of
black and wafted far away into the shadows.

And they toasted the "Old Battalion," the warriors who were lying in the
damp Masnieres soil; the Future; and God's own Isle--their little
motherland. It hurt, how it hurt! How the tiny green island rose mistily
before the eyes in all its sun-bathed romance and mystery! How the sweet
aroma of its gold, furze-crowned cliffs, the laughter of blue waters,
the lowing of cattle, came flooding with glad memories on the mind ...
and YOU may not ever again scent that furze or glimpse those waters!

They laughed memory back into its dim past. WHAT of the future? Live
only for the present!

Bunny was happy. Reclining grace