irst himself and then his family, who united in
believing him to be destined for high place and great things. Only
two of those who had to do with him in his boyhood weighed him in the
balance of truth. One was his Public School master, who labored with
incessant and painful care to awaken in him some glimmer of the need of
preparation for that bitter fight to which every man is appointed. The
other was Grant Maitland, whose knowledge of men and of life, gained at
cost of desperate conflict, made the youth's soul an open book to him.
Recognising the boy's aptitude, he had in holiday seasons set Tony
behind the machines in his planing mill, determined for his father's
sake to make of him a mechanical engineer. To Tony each new machine was
a toy to be played with; in a week or two he had mastered it and
grown weary of it. Thenceforth he slacked at his work and became a
demoralizing influence in his department, a source of anxiety to his
steady-going father, a plague to his employer, till the holiday time was
done.

"Were you my son, my lad, I'd soon settle you," Grant Maitland would
say, when the boy was ready to go back to his school. "You will make a
mess of your life unless you can learn to stick at your job. The roads
are full of clever tramps, remember that, my boy."

But Tony only smiled his brilliant smile at him, as he took his pay
envelope, which burned a hole in his pocket till he had done with it.
When the next holiday came round Tony would present himself for a job
with Jack Maitland to plead for him. For to Tony Jack was as king, to
whom he gave passionate loyalty without stint or measure. And thus for
his son Jack's sake, Jack's father took Tony on again, resolved to make
another effort to make something out of him.

The bond between the two boys was hard to analyse. In games at Public
and High School Jack was always Captain and Tony his right-hand man,
held to his place and his training partly by his admiring devotion to
his Captain but more by a wholesome dread of the inexorable disciplinary
measures which slackness or trifling with the rules of the game would
inevitably bring him. Jack Maitland was the one being in Tony's
world who could put lasting fear into his soul or steadiness into his
practice. But even Jack at times failed.

Then when both were eighteen they went to the War, Jack as an Officer,
Tony as a Non-Commissioned Officer in the same Battalion, Jack hating
the bloody business but resolut