Then the Company wearily gathered up its picks and shovels and dogs and sleds, and its dead, and trudged back single-file along the edge of the road up which the streaming traffic was already pouring to plunge off the end and plough its way to its appointed places. And now in the “Cheval Blanc” as many of the Company as could find room were crowded, sitting or standing contentedly in a “fug” you could cut with a spade, drinking very weak beer and smoking very strong tobacco, gossiping over the past days, thanking their stars they were behind in rest for a spell. The door opened and admitted a gust of cold air; and the cheerful babel of voices, shuffling feet, and clinking glasses, died in a silence that spread curiously, inwards circle by circle from the door, as three men came in and the Company realised them. The Captain was one, and the other two were—amazing and unusual vision there, for all that it was so familiar in old days at home—normal, decently dressed in tweeds and serge, cloth-capped, ordinary “civilians,” obviously British, and of working class. The Captain halted and waved them forward. “These two gentlemen,” he said to the Company, “are—ah—on a tour of the Front. They will—ah—introduce themselves to you. Corporal, please see them back to my Mess when they are ready to come,” and he went out. The two new-comers were slightly ill at ease and felt a little out of place, although they tried hard to carry it off, and nodded to the nearest men and dropped a “How goes it?” and “Hullo, mates” here and there as they moved slowly through the throng that opened to admit them. Then one of them laughed, still with a slightly embarrassed air, and squared his shoulders, and spoke up loud enough for the room to hear. The room heard—in a disconcerting silence—while he explained that they were two of a “deputation” of working men brought out to “see the conditions” at the Front, and go back and tell their mates in the shops what they saw. “It’s a pity,” said the Corporal gently when he finished, “you ’adn’t come to us a day earlier. ’Twoulda bin some condition you’da seen.” “Wot d’jer want to see?” asked another. “This ... ain’t front ezackly.” “Listen!” cried another, “ain’t that a shell comin’ over? Take cover!” And the room tittered, the nearest shell being a good five miles away. “Want to see everything,” said the deputy. “We’re going in the trenches to-morrow, but bein’ here to-night we asked your Cap’n where we’d meet some o’ the boys, an’ he brought us here.”