enemy.

Behind the fighting line they were in fairly comfortable billets. The
officers were hardworked: the daily programme of drill and parades was
heavy, and in addition there was the task of keeping the men
interested and fit: no easy matter in the bitter cold of a North
France winter. Jim proved a tower of strength to his company
commander, as he had been to his school. He organized football teams,
and taught them the Australian game: he appealed to his father for
aid, and in prompt response out came cases of boxing-gloves, hockey
and lacrosse sets, and footballs enough to keep every man going.
Norah sent a special gift--a big case of indoor games for wet weather,
with a splendid bagatelle board that made the battalion deeply envied
by less fortunate neighbours: until a German shell disobligingly burst
just above it, and reduced it to fragments. However, Norah's disgust
at the news was so deep that the Tired People in residence at Homewood
at the moment conspired together, and supplied the battalion with a
new board in her name; and this time it managed to escape destruction.

The battalion had some stiff fighting towards the end of the winter,
and earned a pat on the back from high quarters for its work in
capturing some enemy trenches. But they lost heavily, especially in
officers. Jim's company commander was killed at his side: the boy
went out at night into No-Man's Land and brought his body in
single-handed, in grim defiance of the Boche machine-guns. Jim had
liked Anstruther: it was not to be thought of that his body should be
dishonoured by the touch of a Hun. Next day he had a far harder task,
for Anstruther had asked him to write to his mother if he failed to
come back. Jim bit his pen for two hours over that letter, and in his
own mind stigmatized it as "a rotten effort," after it was finished.
But the woman to whom it carried whatever of comfort was left in the
world for her saw no fault in it. It was worn and frayed with reading
when she locked it away with her dead son's letters.

Jim found himself a company commander after that day's fighting--doing
captain's work without captain's rank. Wally was his subaltern, an
arrangement rather doubted at first by the Colonel, until he saw that
the chums played the game strictly, and maintained in working hours a
discipline as firm as was their friendship. The men adored them: they
knew their officers shirked neither work nor play, and that they kne