. I get a fine,
easy life, good clothes and food, and plenty of money for my glass of
beer. Where did you sleep last night?" he asked suddenly.

"If I do mind me right," said John Williams, "it were in a leaky barn,
over Newton way."

"Where are you going to sleep to-night?" asked the sergeant again.

Williams remembered his empty pocket. "I doan't know," he said with
regret. "Most likely on some seat in the park."

"Well, you come along o' me, and you'll get a comfortable barricks to
sleep in, a life as you likes, and a bob a day to spend on yourself."

John Williams listened to the dripping of the rain outside. To his
bemused brain the thought of a "comfortable barricks" was very, very
tempting. "Blame me if I doan't come along o' thee," he said at length.

In wartime a medical examination is soon over and an attestation paper
filled up. "There's nothing wrong with you, my man," said the Medical
Officer, "except that you're half drunk."

"I bean't drunk, mister," protested Williams sleepily.

"We'll take you at your word, anyhow," said the doctor. "You're too
good a man physically to lose for the Army."

Thus it was that John Williams took the King's Shilling, and swore to
serve his country as a soldier should.

* * * * *

One of the most wonderful things about the British Army is the way that
recruits are gradually fashioned into soldiers. There are thousands of
men fighting on our different fronts who, a year ago, hated the thought
of discipline and order; they are now amongst the best soldiers we have.
But there are exceptions--Private John Williams was one. In a little
over a year of military service, he had absented himself without leave
no fewer than eleven times, and the various punishments meted out to him
failed signally in their object to break him of his habit. In every
respect save one he was a good soldier, but, do what it would, the Army
could not bring him to see the folly of repeated desertion; the life in
the Army is not the life for a man with the wander thirst of centuries
in his blood. Williams had all the gipsy's love of wandering and
solitude, and not even a threatened punishment of death will cure a man
of that.

So it came about that John Williams sat outside his billet one September
evening, and watched the white chalk road that ran over the hill towards
Amiens. After the flat and cultivated country of Flanders, the rolling
hills called with an unpa