at his face again; as if begging not to be left; and its tail waved feverishly, half in petition, half in rapture. The soldier caught the paws, set them down, and turned his face for home, making the noises that a man makes to his dog; and the little dog followed, close as he could get to those moving ankles, lifting his snout, and panting with anxiety and love. 1917 VI RECORDED Just as the train was going out the compartment was stormed by a figure in khaki, with a rifle, a bad cold, a wife, a basket, a small bundle, and two babies. Setting his rifle down in the corner, he said: "Didn't think we shud ever 'a caught it!" His lean face was streaming with perspiration, and when he took off his overcoat there rose the sweetish sourish scent of a hot goatskin waistcoat. It reached below his waist, and would have kept cold out from a man standing in a blizzard, and he had been carrying a baby, a rifle, a bundle, a basket, and running, on a warmish day. "Grand things, these," he said, and took it off. He also took off his cap, and sat down with the elder baby in a howling draught. "Proper cold I've caught comin' over here," he added. His wife, quite a girl, broad-faced, fresh-coloured, with small grey eyes and a wonderfully placid, comely face, on which a faint shadow seemed printed, sat beside him with the younger baby, a real hairless one, as could be seen when its white knitted cap slipped. The elder baby, perhaps two years old, began whimpering a little. He jigged it gently, and said: "We 'ad a lot o' trouble wi' this one yesterday. The Doctor didn't think 'er fit to travel; but I got to see the old people down there, before I go back out across. Come over Sunday night--only got a week's leave. So here we are," and he laughed. "What is your corps?" I asked. "Engineers." "Join since the war?" He looked at me as if to say: What a question! "Twelve years' service. Been everywhere--India, South Africa, Egypt. Come over to the front from Egypt." "Where? Ypres?" "Beg pardon? Wipers? No, Labassy." "Rough time?" He winked. "Proper rough time." He looked straight at me, and his eyes--Celtic-grey, with a good deal of light in them--stared, wide and fixed, at things beyond me, as only do the eyes of those who have seen much death. There was a sort of burnt-gunpowder look about their rims and lashes, and a fixity that nothing could have stared down. "The Kazer he says it'll all be over by April!" He laughed, abandoning the whole of him to enjoyment of that joke.