She begged him to be present at the wedding so that people might not talk. He went to the wedding and returned to the Front six days ahead of time. Since then he’s seemed to be more white and small and bow-legged than ever. I’m the only man who knows what lies behind his life. We’re the best of friends and, when we’re in the line, we always sleep in the same dug-out—which occasions a certain amount of jealousy among the other officers. When we’re on the march, he has to follow the routine etiquette and share his billets with the Captain. I hate to see him go up front for fear he should die. He shares the same fear for me, and is continually inventing excuses for getting me on the wire when I’m forward. God created him a caricature—the potter’s thumb slipped in the moulding of his clay; but to make amends God gave him the heart of a lion. You love him, protect him, declare him “quaint,” but never for a moment do you cease to admire him with a strangely simple and passionate loyalty. He’s as straight as John the Baptist; it would be impossible to tell him a lie. We have a race-horse in our battery which the Major uses as his charger—a dainty, fine-boned aristocrat of a fellow, red and lean as a rusty sword. When our little Major rides him, leading his battery down the long white roads of France, strangers halt to gaze at the almost childish figure with the short bowed legs, wondering how he ever contrived to climb up so high. At the head of his battery, where he ought to appear most imposing, he looks more like a jockey than a field-officer. It doesn’t matter what strangers wonder or what he looks like, now that we’re bound on a death and glory adventure there’s no man to whom we would sooner entrust or for whom we would sooner lay down our lives. We forget the carelessness of the putter’s thumb and remember only the stoutness of heart which the feeble body hides. His name is Wraith—Charlie Wraith; and his age—. I should guess him to be thirty, though three and a half years of war have so battered his body that he looks forty-five. At last the game ends. It’s eleven o’clock; we march at midnight and can just reach the wagonlines by short-cuts and hard riding. The Major has been in luck; he’s pocketing all the winnings. The glasses are filled for a final toast. The new Major who is taking over from us, raises his glass, “Here’s to Hell with the Kaiser and, if you’ve got to die, may you all die smiling.” We laugh as we make a no heeler of it; dying might be the merriest of sports. But to me—I can’t help thinking of that laddie, a single day at the Front, lying beneath a saddle-blanket with his throat cut and that amazed expression of protest in his staring eyes.