the same fool
mistakes and came and joined them. As I say, it was a sniper's
paradise. . . .

Into this abode of joy, then, came the very superior young "gentleman."
It was principally owing to the fact that Miss Belsize--the "lady" who
dispensed camisoles, or some equally seductive garments--had flatly
refused to accompany him any longer to the High Street Picture Palace
if he remained in his frock coat, that our friend had donned khaki.
For a long while he had stoutly affirmed that he was indispensable;
then the transfer of affection on the part of camisoles to a
dangerous-looking corporal from the wild and woolly West decided him.
He did not like that corporal. No man who, meeting a comparative
stranger, beat him on the back painfully, and, having looked his latest
glad rags up and down, remarked with painful distinctness, "Lumme! is
it real?" could possibly be considered a gentleman. But Miss Belsize
had laughed long and laughed loud; and--well, I will not labour the
point. In due course our superior one found himself in the haunt of
death I have briefly described above, still full of self-importance and
as inconceivably ignorant as the majority are who come for the first
time to the game across the water.

Recently arrived with a draft it was his initial experience of war in
France, in contrast with training in England; in fact, the morning in
question was his first visit to the trenches. And because many better
men than he have endeavoured to conceal a peculiar sinking of the
stomach by an assumed bravado, let us not blame him for the attitude he
endeavoured to take up.

"Pretty quiet, isn't it, corporal?" he remarked airily, as his section
came to rest in a trench behind a mass of broken brick and cobble
stones. "Lor', look at that glass up there, hidden in the stones."
For a moment curiosity mastered him, and he reached up towards it with
his hand. The next instant he gave a cry of anger, as a jolt in his
ribs with a rifle doubled him up. "What the deuce----" he began
angrily.

"Don't you deuce me, my lad," said the corporal dispassionately, "or
you and me will quarrel. Just you do what you're told, and I'll write
and tell your ma you're a good little boy." The corporal--a man of few
words--went on his way, leaving our hero--whose name by the way was
Reginald Simpkins--fuming.

"If that blighter hits me again," he remarked when the N.C.O. was out
of hearing, "I'll----"

"You'll what?" An old