There was the usual awkward Anglo-Saxon silence during which men try to sum up fresh acquaintances. To the newcomer, his two hosts seemed two very ordinary British officers; they looked terribly tired, he thought, but their controlled features gave no hint of any other emotion. (For it is only to tried friends that men in battle voice the secret fears of true courage.) “Have a drink?” asked Sandiland. “Thanks, no.” The man extracted a small looped bag from one pocket, a packet of cigarette papers from the other; flicked off a thin leaf of paper, moistened it at his lips. Then, holding the paper between fingers and thumb of his right hand, he opened the bag with his left; poured a little heap of tobacco onto the paper, began to roll a cigarette. “You’re a Canadian, aren’t you?” asked the battery-commander. “Yes, sir. I’m a Canadian.” “Been out long?” “No, sir. About three months. I’ve been with the Ammunition Column most of that time.” The newcomer spoke slowly, not nasally but with a curious deliberate drawl—a drawl somehow reminiscent to Peter Jameson of five men sitting round a poker-table under the awning of a zinc-decked ship in the Caribbean. One of those five men had drawled his words with just that identical deliberation—and would have been very insulted if he had been referred to as a “Canadian.” “How did you manage to get here so quickly?” asked Sandiland. “Well, sir, I happened to be reporting for duty at Headquarters just when your ’phone message got through. The Colonel told me to send my horses back, and come right along with the guide. He said you’d fix me somehow till my blankets arrived.” Now a Canadian does not talk about his “blankets,” he uses the English word “kit.” Nor does he—as a general rule—smoke granulated tobacco from those looped bags which are referred to as “sacks” in the display-ads of the various firms whose communal address is 111 Fifth Avenue, New York. Also, he strongly objects to walking half-a-mile of sodden ground, trenched and littered with remnants of barbed wire, in his spurs. These details flashed subconsciously through the mind of Peter Jameson, as the three of them sat together in the crumbling trench: but he was very tired, his cough troubled him—and anyway it was none of his business. There were, he knew from experience, many such “Canadians” among the men who originally joined Kitchener’s Army. “But how in the devil,” thought Peter, “did he manage to get a commission?” . . . “Number two gun ready for action, sorr,” called Sergeant Abernethy’s voice from above them. Sandiland called back: “Splendid, Sergeant. We’ll come and have a look at it.”