Thereafter he sat for awhile silent, gazing towards the mountains in the west. The snow glittering upon the peaks brought back to his mind the flashing crystals in the great salt lakes. It was at just such a time, on just such an afternoon, when the two companies of the Legion had marched out from the trees of the high plateaux into the open desert, with its grey-green carpet of halfa-grass. Far away the lake had flashed like an arc of silver set in the ground. Stretton could not but remember that expedition and compare it with the one upon which he was now to start; and the comparison was full of bitterness. Then high hopes had reigned. The companies were marching out upon the Legion's special work; even if disaster overtook them, disaster would not be without its glory. Stretton heard the clear inspiriting music of the bugles, he listened to the steady tramp of feet. Now he was deserting. "I shall miss the Legion," he said regretfully. "I had no idea how much I should miss it until this moment." Its proud past history had grown dear to him. The recklessness of its soldiers, the endless perplexing variety of their characters, the secrets of their lives, of which every now and then, in a rare moment of carelessness, a glimpse was revealed, as though a curtain were raised and lowered--all these particular qualities of the force had given to it a grip upon his affections of which he felt the full strength now. "Any other life," he said, "cannot but be a little dull, a little uninteresting afterwards. I shall miss the Legion very much." Suddenly he put his hand into his pocket and took out of it that letter from the French War Office which his colonel had handed to him. "Look!" and he handed it over to Warrisden. "That is what I joined the Legion to win--a commission; and I have just not won it. In a month or two, perhaps in a week, perhaps even to-morrow, it might have been mine. Very soon I should have been back at home, the life I have dreamed of and worked for ever since I left London, might have been mine to live. It was to have been a good life of great happiness"--he had forgotten, it seemed, that he would regret the Legion--"a life without a flaw. Now that life's impossible, and I am a deserter. It's hard lines, isn't it?" He rose from his chair, and looked for a moment at Warrisden in silence. "I am feeling sorry that I ever came," said Warrisden. "Oh no," Stretton answered, with a smile. "It would have been still worse if I had stayed here, ignorant of the news you have brought me, and had come home in my own time. Things would have been much worse--beyond all remedy. Do you know a man named Callon--Lionel Callon?" he asked abruptly. And before Warrisden could answer, the blood rushed into his face, and he exclaimed, "Never mind; don't answer! Be at the corner of the barracks with the mule at eight." And he went from the tent, cautiously made his way out of the garden, and returned to his quarters.