Some six or eight broke generously into a brisk patter of handclapping at this, and from the exuberant Mr. Galloway came: “Whirroo! That's right--stick up for yer own side always! Go on, me boy; go on!” The urging was unnecessary. Watts was going on as though he had not been interrupted, as though he had not heard the friendly applause, as though his was a tale which stood in most urgent need of the telling: “I'm not saying much of my first year as a soldier. I wasn't satisfied--well, I wasn't happily placed; I'll put it that way. I had hopes at the beginning of being an officer; and when the company election was held I lost out. Possibly I was too ambitious for my own good. I came to know that I was not popular with the rest of the company. My captain didn't like me, either, I thought. Maybe I was morbid; maybe I was homesick. I know I was disappointed. You men have all been soldiers--you know how those things go. I did my duty after a fashion--I didn't skulk or hang back from danger--but I didn't do it cheerfully. I moped and I suppose I complained a lot. “Well, finally I left that company and that regiment. I just quit. I didn't quit under fire; but I quit--in the night. I think I must have been half crazy; I'd been brooding too much. In a day or two I realised that I couldn't go back home--which was where I had started for--and I wouldn't go over to the enemy. Badly as I had behaved, the idea of playing the outright traitor never entered my mind. I want you to know that. So I thought the thing over for a day or two. I had time for thinking it over--alone there in that swamp where I was hiding. I've never spoken of that shameful thing in my life since then--not until to-night. I tried not to think of it--but I always have--every day. “Well, I came to a decision at last. I closed the book on my old self; I wiped out the past. I changed my name and made up a story to account for myself; but I thank God I didn't change flags and I didn't change sides. I was wearing that new name of mine when I came out of those woods, and under it I enlisted in a regiment that had been recruited in a state two hundred miles away from my own state. I served with it until the end of the war--as a private in the ranks.