“Come in,” he said, and after a pause a twinkle came in his eye as he looked at the dejected, hangdog air of the culprit. “H-m-m! You can thank your C.O. and the excellent character he gives you, sir, for my agreeing to drop this matter. I think you realise your offence and won’t repeat it. Zeal and keenness is always commendable; but please temper it with discretion. I am glad to know of any officer keen on his work as I hear you are; but I cannot allow the matter to pass entirely without punishment....” (Guns braced himself with a mental “Now for it.”) “... So I order you to parade at my Headquarters at 7.30 to-night, and have dinner with me.” He paused, said, “That’ll do, sir,” very abruptly, and Guns emerged in a somewhat dazed frame of mind. He said, after the dinner, that the punishment was much worse than it sounded. “Roasting! I never had such a dose of chaffing in my life. Those red-tabbed blighters ... and they were all so _infernally_ polite with it ... it was just beastly—all except the General. My Lord, he’s a man, a proper white man, a real brick. And he was as keen to know all about machine-guns as I am myself.” “Well, you taught him something about them—especially about barrages and the result of indirect fire,” said the Mess, and, “Are you going to barrage the next Huns?” But on his next barrage plans, Guns in the first place—the very first and preliminary place—used a map, many diagrams, and endless pages of notebooks in calculations on where his bullets would come down. VIII NIGHTMARE JAKE HARDING from early childhood had suffered from a horribly imaginative mind in the night hours, and had endured untold tortures from dreams and nightmares. One of his most frequent night terrors was to find himself fleeing over a dreary waste, struggling desperately to get along quickly and escape Something, while his feet and legs were clogged with dragging weights, and dreadful demons and bogies and bunyips howled in pursuit. This was an odd dream, because having been born and brought up in the bush he had never seen such a dreary waste as he dreamed of, and had never walked on anything worse than dry, springy turf or good firm road. There was one night he remembered for long years when he had a specially intensified edition of the same nightmare. It was when he was laid up as a child with a broken arm, and a touch of fever on top of it, and he went through all the usual items of dreary waste, clogged feet trying to run, howling demons in pursuit, and a raging, consuming throat-drying fear. He woke screaming just as he was on the point of being seized and hurled into a yawning furnace filled with flaming red fire, saw a dim light burning by his bedside, felt a cool hand on his brow, heard a soothing voice murmur, “H-sh-sh! There’s nothing to be afraid of. You’re quite safe here. Go to sleep again.” “I’m glad, Nursie,” said Jake, “I’m glad I’ve waked up; I’ve had a drefful dream.”