Driver Trottrot was handed over to me and I had a private talk with him. He would give no assurances that he was going to reform, he distrusted me the way a dog does a man who holds a whip behind his back. Little by little, however, as days went by he began to respond to kindness. Within a month he was the smartest man upon parade, had the cleanest set of harness and the best groomed horses. He was promoted to a centre-team, then to a wheel-team and was finally made lead-driver of the first-line wagon. Beyond this we have not dared to promote him because the men declare that he is not to be trusted under shell-fire. There are two ammunition-wagons to each gun: the firing-battery wagon, which follows the gun into action, and the first-line which brings up the ammunition. The picked drivers of any sub-section are on the gun-teams, as their work is likely to prove the most dangerous; the next best are on the teams of the firing battery; the next on those of the first line; the remainder are kept as spare drivers. The best driver of any team rides in lead. Trottrot ought to be driving lead of the gun by virtue of his work. Whenever an inspecting officer is going the round of our horse-lines, he always stops to praise the glossy coats of Trottrot’s team and to comment on them as an example of what can be done by horsemanship. But we’re afraid to give him his deserts on account of the men’s belief that he lacks “guts.” Trottrot has lived down his reputation for being a “bad actor,” but his reputation for being “yellow” clings. We treat him like a “white man” and he acts as though he were one. Perhaps the carnage towards which we are marching may give him his chance to wipe the slate clean of his old record. I hope so and believe that that’s what he’s hoping. There’s a curious look of determination in his eyes, as though he waited breathless for the commencement of the danger. It’s as though he were trying to tell me: “I won’t let you down, sir, I’ll either die in this show or come out of it lead-driver of the gun.” I lay my money on Trottrot; he’s a white man to his marrow, if I know one. VI AFTER writing my prophecy concerning Driver Trottrot, I lay down to snatch a few hours sleep. My batman had spread my sleeping-sack on the tiled floor of the cottage bedroom in which I and three of my brother officers were billeted. The other three had been breathing heavily for some hours, wearied by the night’s march. They had not removed more than their boots and tunics for fear we should receive hurried orders to take to the road again. They lay curled up like dogs, with their knees drawn to their chins, for all the world like aborigines who had scooped a hole in the leaves of a forest. One learns to sleep that way on active service and to lose no time in tumbling off. My last memory was of wide-open lattice-windows, the heavy listlessness of garden-flowers and the perfumed stillness of trees drowsing in the sultry August sun.