“An’ how are you gettin’ on?” he asked as they all stood to go. “Shaken down wi’ your new chums all right?” And the whole room, new hands and old alike, heard Rabbie’s slow, clear answer: “We’re thinkin’ they’re an awfu’ saft kneel-an’-pray kind o’ push. But noo we’ve jined them we’ll sune learn them to be a battalyun. I wish we’d a few more o’ the real stuff from the depot wi’s, but Lauchie here’s the lad tae learn them, and we’ll maybe mak a battalyun o’ them yet.” The “learning” began that night after the estaminets closed, and there was a liberal allowance of black eyes and swollen features on parade next morning. It transpired that boxing had been rather a feature back at the depot, and the new men fully held their own in the “learning” episodes. But out of the encounters grew a mutual respect, and before long the old and the new had mixed, and were a battalion instead of “the battalion and the draft.” Only “Shirty” of the whole lot retained any animus against the new, and perhaps even with him it is hardly fair to say it was against the one-time draft, because actually it was against one or two members of it. He had never quite forgiven nor forgotten the taking-down he had had from Rabbie Macgregor and Lauchie McLauchlan, and continued openly or veiledly hostile to them. Thrice he had fought Rabbie, losing once to him—that was the first time after the estaminet episode—fighting once to an undecided finish (which was when the picket broke in and arrested both), and once with the gloves on at a Battalion Sports, when he had been declared the winner on points—a decision which Rabbie secretly refused to accept, and his friend Lauchie agreed would have been reversed if the fight had been allowed to go to a finish. Shirty was in the bombing section, or “Suicide Club,” as it was called, and both Rabbie and Lauchie joined the same section, and painfully but very thoroughly acquired the art of hurling Mills’ grenades at seen or unseen targets from above ground or out of deep and narrow and movement-cramping trenches. And after a winter and spring of strenuous training, the battalion came at last to move up and take a part in the new offensive of 1917. This attack had several features about it that pleased and surprised even the veterans of the Somme. For one thing, the artillery fire on our side had a weight and a precision far beyond anything they had experienced, and the attack over the open of No Man’s Land was successfully made with a low cost in casualties which simply amazed them all. Rabbie openly scoffed at the nickname of “Suicide Club” for the Bombing Section. They had lost a couple of men wounded in the first attack, and had spent a merry morning frightening Boche prisoners out of their dug-outs, or in obstinate cases flinging Mills’ grenades down the stairways.