Spudhole put the cigarette in his mouth and the newcomer lit it with a match. He gave the others cigarettes also and lit the last three with the same match; the stranger was the third smoker. This was not discovered until it was done. "Devil blow me blind!" exclaimed Bowdy Benners. "He lit his cig----" Then he stopped, and a moment's silence ensued. "It's always unlucky," said Spudhole. "D'ye mind old Stumpy...." "Hold your row, you old woman!" Benners exclaimed. "The superstition is a modern one," said Flanagan, blowing the smoke of a cigarette through his nostrils. "Invented, I suppose, by Bryant and May's to increase the output of matches." "But wot about old Stumpy?" asked Bubb. "Stumpy be damned!" exclaimed Benners, who was seldom moved to such a state of excitement. "Hold your jaw, Spudhole." "So we're going up to the trenches to-night," said the newcomer in an eager voice. "Yes, we're going up," said Flanagan moodily. "It's always going up. I suppose you'll be quite pleased going into action for the first time." "Delighted," said the boy, and his hearers chuckled at the frank admission. "It's young blood and not knowin' things that makes you say that," said Bubb, shaking his head with an air of wisdom at which his mates would have laughed if their rest had been assured for another week. But now as they sat there waiting for the signal to move up to the fighting line which they knew so well, it was a different matter.... The talk turned to England; the newcomer, whose name was Frank Reynolds, had much to tell about home, his people, his life at school, and above all, about his life in the Army. He was the only child of a head clerk in a London Bank, his father had died recently, and now only the mother remained at home. She lived in Hampstead, and was rather well to do, having money left to her by a rich relative. She was very fond of her boy and would send him parcels twice a week. "No cigarettes, though," said Reynolds. "She doesn't know that I smoke, and I daren't tell. It would hurt her.... I learned to smoke since I joined the Army; just about three cigarettes a day." "I could smoke that many when drinking my tea," said Bubb. Conversation ceased at that moment, for the whistle was blown in the street and the soldiers were forming up preparatory to moving off to the trenches. The battalion set off and marched along the road by the river, company after company, with little connecting files in between. Not the slightest breeze was awake, the river was silent, and the tall, graceful poplars which lined their route looked blacker and straighter than usual. They seemed to have gone to sleep even as they stood. The whole world was in repose, the battalion's movement was a sacrilege against the gods of the still night.