When at last the job on which he was engaged was finished, he knocked his men off, got them bucketsful of hot coffee and dashed it with rum, since it had come on to rain and they were all very damp. Then he saw them safely into the old barracks allotted to them as sleeping quarters, made his way back to the station, and took possession of an empty first-class carriage, scribbled a brief note to Lois,--scrappy little letters they were, in pencil, and the paper at times got soiled, but she valued them more than jewels of price,--and then he lay down and was sound asleep in two minutes. Their time seemed to have come the next afternoon. Orders came to move forward at three o’clock. Rumour, with a score of tongues, was on the ramp. Kitchener had sent word that they were not to go into the firing-line. Hard-pressed Generals all round were clamouring for them. Half-a-dozen other Territorial Regiments were coming up and they were all to go on together. They were not wanted. They were badly wanted. The So-and-Sos had been practically wiped out. And the Etceteras had had to fall back before three whole army-corps. At half-past four, motor-buses by the score came rolling up--from Barnes and Putney, from Cricklewood and Highgate,--and the old familiar look of them made them all feel almost at home. There were no conductors, no tickets, no tinkling bell-punches. Everything was free on the road to death. They climbed on board and whirled away between the poplar trees, over roads that were cobbled in the centre only and all the rest mud. Now and again a bus would swerve from dead-centre and skid down into the mud and have to be shoved bodily back into safety. Now and again one would succumb to such unusual experiences, and its occupants would storm the next that came along and crush merrily in on top of its already full load. But whatever their actual feelings--and when did a Scot ever show his actual feelings?--they treated it all as the best of jokes, and sang and laughed and chaffed as though it were a wedding they were going to. And so indeed it was, the greatest wedding of all--the wedding of Life and Death on the Field of Duty, whose legitimate offspring is Glory and Honour--of this world or the next. Not one of them there, I suppose, though they bore themselves so cheerfully, had any desire for fighting for fighting’s sake. They were men of peace,--lawyers, barristers, students, merchants, clerks. They had come away from comfortable homes and good prospects. They had left parents and wives, lovers and friends, at the highest Call Life’s bugles sound for any man. They did well to be merry while they might. It is better to be merry than to mope, though your name be cast for death while the laugh is on your lips. They laughed and joked, but the White Fire burned within them. They were answering The Call.