t,
conning the paper, and with a note, which he could not suppress, of
elation in his voice.

"Ay; does it not?" said Nicky-Nan scornfully. "Well, I leave 'ee at
home, to prove how honest you can contrive to be with it.
D'ee _see?_ . . . There's boys, like your nephew, young Obed Pearce,
as goes to fight for their conscience; an' there's boys, like young
Seth Minards, as goes to fight despite their conscience; but for me,
that am growin' elderly, I go, maybe with a touch o' the old country,
in contempt o' my kind."

Mr Pamphlett had seated himself at the table, and with his golden
pencil-holder was at work on the paper making calculations.
Nicky-Nan, going out, turned in the doorway and lifted his hand to
the old remembered naval salute.

A couple of hours later, having given them a two-miles' lift on the
way, Nicky-Nan at the cross-roads dropped young Seth and young Obed
to take their way to the inland barracks. He was for the coast-road,
with the hospital and the operating-theatre at the end of it.
If Heaven willed, he might eventually be of some service on the heave
of the sea, as they in their youth and their strength assuredly would
be in the land campaign.

As his hired trap jolted on, at a twist of the road before it bore
straight-eastwardly, he caught sight of their diminishing figures
side by side and already a goodish way off on a rise of the inland
road. It did not occur to them to turn on the chance of sighting him
and waving a hand. The two were comrades already, sharing talk, on
this their first stage towards the battlefields of Flanders.

FINIS.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Nicky-Nan, Reservist
by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

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