Yarrell-Smith noted nothing. "Well, he won't see anything to-night, sir; and if Sammy will pull himself together and pity the sorrows of a poor young man whose trembling knees--" "Sorry," said Sammy, turning to the locker and fishing forth a bottle. "--I'll tell you why," Yarrell-Smith went on as the tot was filled. "First place, the Bosch has finished hating us for to-night and gone to bye-bye. Secondly, it's starting to sleet--and that vicious, a man can't see five yards in front of him." "I love my love with a B because he's Boschy," said Sammy lightly: "I'll take him to Berlin--or say, Bapaume to begin with--and feed him on Substitutes. . . . Do you know that parlour-game, Yarrell dear? Are you a performer at Musical Chairs? Were you by any chance brought up on a book called _What Shall We do Now?_ The fact is--" Sammy, who could be irreverent, but so as never to offend, stole a look at Otway--"we're a trifle hipped in the old log cabin. I started a guessing-competition just now, and our Commanding Officer won't play. Turn up the reference, Polky--Ecclesiastes something-or-other. It runs: 'We are become as a skittle-alley in a garden of cucumbers, forasmuch as our centurion will not come out to play with us.'" Otway laughed. "And it goes on that the grasshopper is a burden. . . . But Y.-S. has given you the name, just now." "_I_, sir?" Yarrell-Smith gazed, in the more astonishment to find that Otway, after his laugh, reaching up to trim the lamp, looked strangely serious. "I'm blest if I understand a word of all this. . . . What name, sir?" "_Hate_," said Otway, dropping back into his chair and drawing at his pipe. "But you're warm; as they say in the nursery-game. Try '_Foe_,' if you prefer it." "Oh, I see," protested Yarrell-Smith, after a bewildered look around. "You've all agreed to be funny with a poor orphan that has just come in from the cold." Barham paid no heed to this. "'Foe' might be the name of a man. It's unusual. . . . But what was the Johnny called who wrote _Robinson Crusoe?_" "It _was_ the name of a man," answered Otway. "_This_ man?" Barham tapped his finger on the newspaper. Otway nodded. "The man the inquest was held on?" "That--or the other." Otway looked around at them queerly. "I think the other. But upon my soul I won't swear." "The other? You mean the stranger--the man who interrupted--" At this point Yarrell-Smith sank upon a locker. "I beg your pardon, all of you," he moaned helplessly; "but if there's such a thing about as First Aid--" "Sammy had better read you this thing he's unearthed," said Polkinghorne kindly. Barham picked up the newspaper. "No, you don't," Otway commanded. "Put it down. . . . If you fellows don't mind listening, I'll tell you the story. It's about Hate; real Hate, too; not the Bosch variety." NIGHT THE FIRST. JOHN FOE.