At least this is how they appeared to him. Forced by Nature to sleep for some of the hours of darkness, and forced by the Germans to be still for all the clearest of the daylight, it was at the spells of dusk and dawn that he became busiest, and that infernal procession was ever before his eyes. It was endless. It was hopeless. By no means could his prim middle-class mind get to like or admire anything so far from the defined comfort and unvarying security to which he belonged and to which he longed to return. It was useless. With the precision of a machine, that procession was duplicated by another moving in the opposite direction. Lorries, ambulances, stretchers, men, men, guns, limbers, men, men, men. The raw material went up. The finished article came back. Dormer and his companion and their like, over twenty miles of line, sorted and sifted and kept the stream in motion. That companion of his was not the least of his grievances. The fellow was no Dormer, he was opposite by name and nature. His name was Kavanagh, and one of the meagre comforts Dormer got was by thinking of him as a d----d Irishman. He was, or had been going to be, a schoolmaster, and next to nature (or nationality), the worst thing about him was he would talk. And he would _not_ keep his hands still. Two things that Dormer most gravely disapproved of, and which he attributed in equal shares to lack of experience of the world, and too much signalling. His talk was such tripe, too! He never lost a moment. He started first thing in the morning. All the traffic that was going up forward was gone. The earth was empty, save for anti-aircraft guns pop-popping at planes high in the Italian blue. Dormer had shaved and breakfasted and hoped to catch up some of the sleep he had lost during the night. But would that fellow allow that? No. Listen to him now, under the tiny lean-to they had contrived, by the dug-out steps, for washing purposes. He was--reciting--would one call it? “The last tattoo is beating, boys, The pickets are fast retreating, boys, Let every man Fill up his can And drink to our next merry meeting, boys!” “Do you call that poetry?” “No.” This was rather awkward. Dormer had intended a snub. Not caring for poetry himself, he had tried to take a high line. He went on lamely: “Oh! What do you call it then?” “A most amazing picture of the mentality of 1815. Compare it with that of 1915. In that old war of ours against the French, we swore, we drank, we conquered. What do you think that same fellow would have to write about us to-day?” “He wouldn’t,” put in Dormer, without avail. “Something like this: “‘’Z day is fast approaching, boys, In gas-drill we want coaching, boys, Our iron ration Will soon be in fashion.’ What rhymes to coaching?” “How should I know?”