erfully, for I knew now what had been the weight on
my heart ever since I accepted Sir Walter's mission. It was the
loneliness of it. I was fighting far away from my friends, far away
from the true fronts of battle. It was a side-show which, whatever its
importance, had none of the exhilaration of the main effort. But now
we had come back to familiar ground. We were like the Highlanders cut
off at Cite St Auguste on the first day of Loos, or those Scots Guards
at Festubert of whom I had heard. Only, the others did not know of it,
would never hear of it. If Peter succeeded he might tell the tale, but
most likely he was lying dead somewhere in the no-man's-land between
the lines. We should never be heard of again any more, but our work
remained. Sir Walter would know that, and he would tell our few
belongings that we had gone out in our country's service.

We were in the _castrol_ again, sitting under the parapets. The same
thoughts must have been in Sandy's mind, for he suddenly laughed.

'It's a queer ending, Dick. We simply vanish into the infinite. If
the Russians get through they will never recognize what is left of us
among so much of the wreckage of battle. The snow will soon cover us,
and when the spring comes there will only be a few bleached bones.
Upon my soul it is the kind of death I always wanted.' And he quoted
softly to himself a verse of an old Scots ballad:

'Mony's the ane for him maks mane,
But nane sall ken whar he is gane.
Ower his white banes, when they are bare,
The wind sall blaw for evermair.'

'But our work lives,' I cried, with a sudden great gasp of happiness.
'It's the job that matters, not the men that do it. And our job's
done. We have won, old chap--won hands down--and there is no going
back on that. We have won anyway; and if Peter has had a slice of
luck, we've scooped the pool ... After all, we never expected to come
out of this thing with our lives.'

Blenkiron, with his leg stuck out stiffly before him, was humming
quietly to himself, as he often did when he felt cheerful. He had only
one song, 'John Brown's Body'; usually only a line at a time, but now
he got as far as the whole verse:

'He captured Harper's Ferry, with his nineteen men so true,
And he frightened old Virginny till she trembled through and through.
They hung him for a traitor, themselves the traitor crew,
But his soul goes marching along.'

'Feelin