"Cursed if I know," was the reply. "I've lost count." Sam sat gloomily looking into the fire. In his brain was a vision of the great thoroughfare, lined with naphtha flares, thronged with people who clustered about the stalls, here and there the blaze of lights upon the white-and-gold façade of a picture-palace, the yellowish radiance of a public-house. He visualised it now, distant from it, as the rustic looks back to his village, sentimentally. There the incidents, commonplace enough, sordid even, which had made his life something individual to himself, had linked themselves one by one. "Bill," he said huskily, "if I saw those blank foreigners marchin' up the Ole Kent Road, I'd go for 'em--if there wasn't a man to 'elp me." "'Ear, 'ear!" said Bill. "So would I." "I've got a bit o' skirt meself wot lives just off the Ole Kent Road," said the third man in a tone of reminiscence. "Let's 'ave some more beer. I say," he remarked suddenly, having refilled his mug, "if the army comes back it'll be a fair cop for us, won't it?" "I ain't goin' back," said Sam sturdily, still gazing into the fire. "I'm fed up--and w'en I'm fed up I'm fed up." Bill had wakened at the suggestion. "But s'pose they come back, Sam? Wot'll we do?" The third man interposed. "'Tain't wot we'll do. It's wot they'll do. They'll shoot us, by Gawd they will!" Panic came into his sharp little white face. He was desperately in earnest. "They'll shoot every man of us!" "_They_ won't come back," said Sam. "Ho! Won't they? And 'aven't they countermarched before? W'y--I 'eard an officer say only this afternoon that they'd be 'avin' another go at 'em to-morrow." "Did yer, really?" asked Bill, now thoroughly frightened. "'Strue as I stand 'ere!--'We'll march back quick an' catch 'em,' 'e said," the little man invented rapidly. "An officer in the cavalry, it was. Staff-officer, shudn't wonder." "Oh, my Gawd!" cried Bill, his beer-muddled faculties dispersing before a gale of fear. "'Ere, Sam--I'm orf! Come on! You brought me into this, yer know--I didn't want to desert. I told yer so, lots o' times--an' now!--Come on!--I ain't goin' to stop 'ere to get shot!" "'Arf a mo!" said the little man. "'Tain't no good runnin' orf in that uniform. Wot we've got to do is to find some togs. Then if they comes back we're just _h_onest rustics, see?" Sam stood up. The sudden panic of his companions had communicated itself to his slower brain. He also trembled at the prospect of recapture. "That's the ticket, mate. You've got it. You're a smart little cove. Wot's yer name?" This, he implied, was condescension. "Hoswald--Hoswald Smiff--my farver was a toff, a flash cove, 'e was. Come on, mates--there's sure to be some togs upstairs--shudn't wonder if they've left some dibs be'ind 'em, too." "They left the beer, anyway," said Bill. His tone implied that people who left beer would leave anything.