ed the Senior Captain gloomily. "Isn't
there any preserved ginger? Lord, what a Mess!"

Weary Williams, a time-expired Second Lieutenant--a ticket-of-leave
man, as it were, without a ticket-of-leave--who had once commanded the
remnants of two companies with honour but not with acknowledgment,
poised a fountain-pen, inquiring casually, "_What_ was it the C.O.
said about the destruction of Ypres? Ah, yes" (and he began to write),
"_a Brobdingnagian act of brachycephalic brutality_...."

* * * * *

At breakfast about a week later the Colonel seemed to be enjoying his
immense pile of correspondence so heartily that many of the Mess,
comparatively letterless as they were, directed glances of injured
interest towards him--of rather deeper interest than was warranted by
military discipline or civilian breeding (which are, of course, the
same virtue in different forms).

Then, presently, as he put down one letter and opened another, the
Major was seen to stiffen and the Junior Sub. to wilt. The attention
of the table became as fixed and frigid as that of the midnight sentry
at a loophole. The Colonel toyed happily with another letter (while
the Senior Captain made a careful census of the grounds at the bottom
of his coffee-cup), took the range of the manure-heap outside the
window from the angles of the table-legs, rose, and departed with his
correspondence, summoning Williams to follow him.

Outside the Weary One waited respectfully for the Colonel to speak.

"So you saw through my camouflage?" said the latter thoughtfully.

"Yes, Sir."

"How did you do it?"

"Well, Sir, to mention only the internal evidence--an
'Artist'"--Williams waved his hand expressively towards the
manure-heap; "'thirty-three'--one of the youngest C.O.'s in the Army,
I believe?" He bowed politely.

"Ha!" said the Colonel.

"'Literary'--I remember your stopping Captain Jones's leave for a
split infinitive in a ration return. 'Travelled'--you have travelled
in Turkey, I think, Sir?"

The Colonel, who had been blown out of a trench at Krithia, nodded
shortly.

"'Mentally isolated'--I'm afraid, Sir, our Mess doesn't afford very
much for a mind like yours to bite on. I'm afraid, too, that such
correspondence as--as mine, for instance--can hardly be called either
brilliant or interesting."

"I don't know," said the Colonel. "That was a very good bit about the
destruction of Ypres. What was it?--Ha, yes--_A Brob