“‘Did we get the other one?’ I asked of my servant, whom I saw beside me. ‘She sunk proper, sir,’ said he. ‘You, sir, are the only casualty we ’ad.’ It was an honour which I found it difficult to appreciate. ‘What’s the damage?’ I muttered. ‘I’m afraid, sir,’ he replied diffidently, ’that your right leg is blowed away.’ Then I fainted, and did not come round again till I was in hospital here. My leg is gone at the knee; I lost a lot of blood, and should have lost my life but for the tourniquet which the Owner himself whipped round my thigh. They have whittled the stump shipshape here, and I am to have a new leg of the most fashionable design. The doctors say that I shall not know the difference when I get used to it, and shall be able to play golf and even tennis. Golf and tennis! Good games, but they seem a bit tame after the life I’ve led for the last two years.” Cæsar fell silent, and I gripped his hand. “It isn’t as if you were in the Regular Service,” I murmured. “It isn’t your career that’s gone. That is still to come. You’ve done your bit, Cæsar, old man.” His eyes glittered and a tear welled over and rolled down his cheek. That was all, the only sign of weakness and of regret for the lost leg and the lost opportunities for further service. When he spoke again it was the old cheerful Cæsar whom I knew. “It seems funny. A month or two hence I shall be back at Oxford, reading philosophy and all sorts of absurd rubbish for my First in Greats. From Oxford I came, and to Oxford I shall return; these two years of life will seem like a dream. A few years hence I shall have nothing but my medal and my wooden leg to remind me of them. It has been a good time, Copplestone—a devilish good time. I have done my bit, but I wasn’t cut out for a fighting man. There is too much preparation and too little real business. I should have exhausted the thing and got bored. In time I should have become an S.O.B. like some of those others. No, Copplestone, I have nothing to regret, not even the lost leg. It is better to go out like this than to wait till the end of the war, and then to be among the Not Wanteds.” “They’ve made you a Lieutenant-Commander,” I said slowly. “Two and a half stripes,” he murmured. “They look pretty, but they are only the wavy ones, not the real article. I was never anything but a ‘tempory blighter, ’ere to-day and gone to-morrow, and good riddance.’ It was decent of them to think of me, but stripes are no use to me now. I shall be at Oxford with the other cripples, and the weak hearts, and the aliens, and the conscientious objectors—what do the dregs of Oxford know of stripes?” * * * * *