rtmoor and past Cleeve Court.
His thoughts went back to Devonshire, but not to linger there; only
to wonder how much love his mother would put into her prayers could
she be reached by a vision of him stretched here with his first
battle waiting for him on the morrow. He wondered, not bitterly, if
her chief reflection would be that he had brought the unpleasant
experience on himself when he might have been safe in a priest's
cassock. He laughed. How little she understood him, or had ever
understood!

His heart went out to salute the morrow--and yet soberly. Outside of
his simple duties of routine he was just an unshaped subaltern, with
eyes sealed as yet to war's practical teachings. To him, albeit he
would have been puzzled had anyone told him so, war existed as yet
only as a spiritual conflict in which men proved themselves heroes or
cowards: and he meant to be a hero. For him everything lay in the
will to dare or to endure. He recalled tales of old knights keeping
vigil by their arms in solitary chapels, and he questioned the far
hill-tops and the stars--What substitute for faith supported _him_?
Did he believe in God? Yes, after a fashion--in some tremendous and
overruling Power, at any rate. A Power that had made the mountains
yonder? Yes, he supposed so. A loving Power--an intimate
counsellor--a Father attending all his steps? Well, perhaps; and if
so, a Father to be answered with all a man's love: but, before
answering, he honestly needed more assurance. As for another world
and a continuing life there, should he happen to fall to-morrow, John
searched his heart and decided that he asked for nothing of the sort.
Such promises struck him as unworthy bribes, belittling the sacrifice
he came prepared to make. He despised men who bargained with them.
Here was he, young, abounding in life, ready to risk extinction.
Why? For a cause (some might say), and that cause his country's.
Maybe: he had never thought this out. To be sure he was proud to
carry the regimental colours, and had rather belong to the 46th than
to any other regiment. The honour of the 46th was dear to him now as
his own. But why, again? Pure accident had assigned him to the
46th: as for love of his country, he could not remember that it had
played any conspicuous part in sending him to join the army.
The hammering on the bridge had ceased without his noting it, and
also the whirr of the great hands-driven saw. Only the river sang to