Listening to it, Peter began to think of the Brigade in its Brighton days. So many of the faces about him were new since then: yet the Brigade, the Fourth Southdown Brigade, R.F.A.—the “Virgin-bosom” Brigade as Stark used to call them every time his meticulous recommendations for honours were struck out by the bemedalled Staff—still lived. The thing he, Peter, had helped to make, went on . . . went on, and would go on, right to the finish. . . . “A long wai ter get ter Berlin!” He seemed to hear his Cockneys again,—singing. “So you see, when we begin moving up into action tomorrow,” interrupted Revelsworth’s voice. . . . Peter looked round him at the mute expressionless faces above the khaki collars. There were a few of the “old gang” still. Lodden, Conway, Purves, Pettigrew and Straker, “Brat” Archdale, (acting orderly officer, grown from blushing boy to hollow-cheeked young man), Merrilees, solemn as an owl, unaltered. . . . Eight, including himself, nine. Nine out of twenty six! How many of those nine would be left after this new show? Eight at most! One of them was done for already; couldn’t hope to last more than a month. And that one of them was himself. . . . Still, nobody need know about that till he came out of action. . . . _If_ he came out of action. . . . For Peter’s cough, the cough that drove him, hacking and spitting, night after night—gum-booted, “British Warm” over his pyjamas—out of the stifling room he shared with Pettigrew into the moonlight, was not the result of over-smoking. . . . Rolleston, the kindly diffident “general practitioner” who doctored Colonel Brasenose’s Brigade, had told Peter that much; told it him unconsciously. They had met quite by accident, that very afternoon; gone to Rolleston’s “surgery.” Peter, accepting a drink, choked over it; put his handkerchief to his mouth. “None of my business of course,” the doctor had ventured, “but if I were you I’d consult Laurillard about that wheeze of yours. Never been gassed, have you? Slightly, I mean.” Peter kept silence. “Funny stuff, gas,” went on the doctor. “I had a case of it before I came out, while I was still in civilian practice. A young Canadian came to me with a frightful cough—rather like that cough of yours, by the way. I tested for tubercle, of course. Not a trace. Then he began talking about the first gas-attack; said he’d been in it. That put me on the track. . . .” “But surely,” interrupted Peter, “after all that time. . . .” “Oh, he wasn’t gassed, in the Army sense of the word; but there’s no doubt in my mind that a tiny molecule of chlorine must have lodged in his left lung, and started the irritation. . . .” “Did you cure him?”