iness. At any rate, they paid him no attention.

Just within the walls, where the conflagration had burnt itself out,
there were patches of black shadow to be crossed carefully.
The fighting had been obstinate here, and more than one blazing house
had collapsed into the thick of it. The corporal picked his way
gingerly, shivering a little at the thought of some things buried, or
half-buried, among the loose stones. Indeed, at the head of the
first street his foot entangled itself in something soft. It turned
out to be nothing more than a man's cloak, or _poncho_, and he
slipped it on, to hide his uniform and avoid explanations should he
fall in with one of the patrols; but the feel of it gave him a scare
for a moment.

The lad, in fact, was sick of fighting and slaughter--physically ill
at the remembrance and thought of them. The rage of the assault had
burnt its way through him like a fever and left him weak, giddy,
queasy of stomach. He had always hated the sight of suffering, even
the suffering of dumb animals: and as a sportsman, home in England,
he had learnt to kill his game clean, were it beast or bird.
In thought, he had always loathed the trade of a butcher, and had
certainly never guessed that soldiering could be--as here in San
Sebastian he had seen it--more bestial than the shambles.

For some reason, as he picked his road, his mind wandered away from
the reek and stink of San Sebastian and back to England, back to
Somerset, to the slopes of Mendip. His home there had overlooked an
ancient battle-field, and as a boy, tending the sheep on the uplands,
he had conned it often and curiously, having heard the old men tell
tales of it. The battle had been fought on a wide plain intersected
by many water-dykes. Twice or thrice he had taken a holiday to
explore it, half expecting that a close view would tell him something
of its history; but, having no books to help him, he had brought back
very little beyond a sense of awe that so tremendous a thing had
happened just there, and (unconsciously) a stored remembrance of the
scents blown across the level from the flowers that lined the dykes--
scents of mint and meadow-sweet at home there, as the hawthorn was at
home on the hills above.

He smelt them now, across the reek of San Sebastian, and they wafted
him back to England--to boyhood, dreaming of war but innocent of its
crimes--to long thoughts, long summer days spent among the unheeding
sheep, his dog