'im robbin' the comp'ny! 'nough to take away a man's kerrikter!" said the patient walker-home in emergency. It made life seem too wonderful to end; such were the untold reserves that we had in this nation of men with a hold on themselves, of hardly uprightness; even this unhelped son of the gutter, living from hand to mouth in the common lodging-houses of slums, a parasite upon parasites, poor little animalcule doing odd jobs for the caterpillars of the commonwealth--even he could persist in carrying steadily, clear of the dirt, the full vase of his private honour. What, then, must be the unused stores of greedless and fearless straightness in others above us, generals and statesmen, men in whom, as in bank-porters, character is three parts of the trade! The world seemed clean that night; such a lovely unreason of optimist faith was astir in us all, We felt for that time ravish'd above earth And possess'd joys not promised at our birth. It seemed hardly credible now, in this soured and quarrelsome country and time, that so many men of different classes and kinds, thrown together at random, should ever have been so simply and happily friendly, trustful, and keen. But they were, and they imagined that all their betters were too. That was the paradise that the bottom fell out of. CHAPTER II MISGIVING I What could the New Army not have done if all the time of its training had been fully used! A few, at least, of its units had a physique above that of the Guards; many did more actual hours of work, before going abroad, than Guardsmen in peace-time do in two years; all were at first as keen as boys, collectors, or spaniels--whichever are keenest; when the official rations of warlike instruction fell short they would go about hungrily trying to scratch crumbs of that provender out of the earth like fowls in a run.