* * * *

The second episode befell during our brief rest after the Polygon Wood,
when I had ridden down the line one afternoon to see a friend in the
Heavy Artillery. I was returning in the drizzle of evening, clanking
along the greasy path between the sad poplars, when I struck a Labour
company repairing the ravages of a Boche strafe that morning. I wasn't
very certain of my road and asked one of the workers. He straightened
himself and saluted, and I saw beneath a disreputable cap the features
of the man who had been with me in the Coolin crevice.

I spoke a word to his sergeant, who fell him out, and he walked a bit
of the way with me.

'Great Scot, Wake, what brought you here?' I asked.

'Same thing as brought you. This rotten war.'

I had dismounted and was walking beside him, and I noticed that his
lean face had lost its pallor and that his eyes were less hot than they
used to be.

'You seem to thrive on it,' I said, for I did not know what to say. A
sudden shyness possessed me. Wake must have gone through some violent
cyclones of feeling before it came to this. He saw what I was thinking
and laughed in his sharp, ironical way.

'Don't flatter yourself you've made a convert. I think as I always
thought. But I came to the conclusion that since the fates had made me
a Government servant I might as well do my work somewhere less
cushioned than a chair in the Home Office ... Oh, no, it wasn't a
matter of principle. One kind of work's as good as another, and I'm a
better clerk than a navvy. With me it was self-indulgence: I wanted
fresh air and exercise.'

I looked at him--mud to the waist, and his hands all blistered and cut
with unaccustomed labour. I could realize what his associates must mean
to him, and how he would relish the rough tonguing of non-coms.

'You're a confounded humbug,' I said. 'Why on earth didn't you go into
an O.T.C. and come out with a commission? They're easy enough to get.'

'You mistake my case,' he said bitterly. 'I experienced no sudden
conviction about the justice of the war. I stand where I always stood.
I'm a non-combatant, and I wanted a change of civilian work ... No, it
wasn't any idiotic tribunal sent me here. I came of my own free will,
and I'm really rather enjoying myself.'

'It's a rough job for a man like you,' I said.

'Not so rough as the fellows get in the trenches. I watched a battalion
marching back today and they looked like ghosts who had