red brute. "Haven't you any
feeling for others?" he wanted to say. "Can't you see that this poor
devil suffers tortures?" But the sheer impossibility of doing this
before ten other men brought a slight sweat out on his face and hands;
and in agitation he smote the table a blow with his fist. The effect was
instantaneous. Everybody looked at the wire-haired man, as if saying:
"Yes, you've gone a bit too far there!" The "little brute" stood it for
a moment, then muttered surlily:

"Well, commend 'im to mercy if you like; I don't care."

"That's right; they never pay any attention to it," said the grey-haired
man, winking heartily. And Mr. Bosengate filed back with the others into
court.

But when from the jury box his eyes fell once more on the hare-eyed
figure in the dock, he had his worst moment yet. Why should this poor
wretch suffer so--for no fault, no fault; while he, and these others,
and that snapping counsel, and the Caesar-like judge up there, went
off to their women and their homes, blithe as bees, and probably never
thought of him again? And suddenly he was conscious of the judge's
voice:

"You will go back to your regiment, and endeavour to serve your country
with better spirit. You may thank the jury that you are not sent to
prison, and your good fortune that you were not at the front when you
tried to commit this cowardly act. You are lucky to be alive."

A policeman pulled the little soldier by the arm; his drab figure with
eyes fixed and lustreless, passed down and away. From his very soul
Mr. Bosengate wanted to lean out and say: "Cheer up, cheer up! I
understand."

It was nearly ten o'clock that evening before he reached home, motoring
back from the route march. His physical tiredness was abated, for he had
partaken of a snack and a whisky and soda at the hotel; but mentally
he was in a curious mood. His body felt appeased, his spirit hungry.
Tonight he had a yearning, not for his wife's kisses, but for her
understanding. He wanted to go to her and say: "I've learnt a lot
to-day-found out things I never thought of. Life's a wonderful thing,
Kate, a thing one can't live all to oneself; a thing one shares with
everybody, so that when another suffers, one suffers too. It's come to
me that what one has doesn't matter a bit--it's what one does, and
how one sympathises with other people. It came to me in the most
extraordinary vivid way, when I was on that jury, watching that poor
little rat of a sold