to. One was a
Christian, of course, but one wanted to know more. One wanted, very
badly, a little precise, definite knowledge of What Happens--after. At
that moment he hated _Hamlet_. Yet the words kept surging through his
brain: "To die ... to sleep ... in that sleep of death, what dreams may
come?... puzzles the will ... makes us rather bear the ills we have,
than fly to others that we know not of!"

Not that conscience had "made a coward" of him, nor of any other man or
boy he had ever seen, a great deal nearer to death and vital, elementary
things than Shakespeare had ever been. He felt a little foolish for it,
but all the same he was thrilled by a sensation of triumphant
superiority to the Bard of Avon.

All the time the rain was streaming down, and all the time their clothes
grew wetter and wetter. Just before dusk a halt was made by the
roadside, and at last the booming of the guns died down to a silence
that was only broken by the incessant patter of the rain upon the sodden
earth.

There was not much to eat, only biscuits, whose freshness and crispness
had been lost in moist pockets. Nobody was thirsty: there was too much
water externally!

It was quite dark when they moved on. Somehow the darkness used to come
to them as a tremendous relief, as an armistice. They felt, in a subtle
way, more at home in it, for it shut out from their eyes the strange
sights and horrors of a land quite foreign to them. After the wearing
day, it brought a freshness that was exhilarating, a refreshing coolness
to the cheeks and hands that was gratifying and soothing. In spite of
everything their spirits rose.

As they passed over a little railway station, innocent, as usual, of any
suspicion of a platform, with a box set up as waiting-room, one of the
men in the section of fours behind him stumbled heavily over the single
lines.

"Nah then, Bill, wotcher doing to New Street Station?" New Street
Station, with its smoke, and hurrying crowds, and shrieking steam to be
compared to this clean, open, deserted spot! The daring of such a
comparison was stupendous. It appealed instantly to the men's sense of
the ridiculous. They roared with laughter.

The rain fell with depressing regularity, the wind blew gustily, but the
ice had been broken, an example had been set, and they all vied with
each other in forgetting their troubles in laughter.

"Blessed if it ain't Saturday night!" said one. It was impossible to say
offhand what d