ast the most wonderful
death. It's the _deepest_ death."

I laughed deprecatingly.

"Oh, I'm resigned to the idea," he pursued. "It's more probable than
improbable. Sooner or later. _Tant va la cruche a l'eau qu' a la fin
elle se casse._"

"_Tant_--'aunt,'" thought I. "_Va_--'goes.' _La cruche_--'the
crust.' _Qu' a la fin elle se casse._" And I said aloud: "I've got
it! 'Aunt goes for the crust at the water, into which, in fine, she
casts herself.'"

"No," corrected Doe, looking away from me wistfully and
self-consciously. "'The pitcher goes so often to the well that at
last it is broken.'"

Sec.2

About this time the great blizzard broke over Gallipoli. On the last
Sunday in November I awoke, feeling like iced chicken, to learn that
the blizzard had begun. It was still dark, and the snow was being
driven along by the wind, so that it flew nearly parallel with the
ground, and clothed with mantles of white all the scrub that opposed
its onrush. This morning only did the wild Peninsula look beautiful.
But its whiteness was that of a whited sepulchre. Never before had
it been so mercilessly cruel. For now was opening the notorious
blizzard that should strike down hundreds with frost-bite, and drown
in their trenches Turks and Britons alike.

It was freezing--freezing. The water in our canvas buckets froze
into solid cakes of ice, which we hewed out with pickaxes and kicked
about like footballs. And all the guns stopped speaking. No more was
heard the whip-crack of a rifle, nor the rapid, crisp, unintelligent
report of a machine-gun. Fingers of friend and foe were too numbed
to fire. An Arctic silence settled upon Gallipoli.

And yet I remember the first day of the blizzard as a day of glowing
things. For on the previous night I had read in Battalion Orders
that I was to be Captain Ray. And so, this piercing morning, I could
go out into the blizzard with three stars on my shoulders. With
Gallipoli suddenness I had leapt into this exalted rank, while Doe,
a more brilliant officer, remained only a Second Lieutenant. For
him, as a specialist, there was no promotion. For me, no sooner had
my O.C. Company been buried alive by the explosion of a Turkish
mine, and his second-in-command gone sick with dysentery, than I,
the next senior though only nineteen, was given the rank of Acting
Captain. And Doe, always most generous when most jealous, had been
profuse in his congratulations.

I confess that not even the hail