“Like hell. We had fifteen killed and twenty wounded too, didn't we, Toby?” “I reckon you're right,” said Toby. “Ain't I right?” asked the other man, addressing the company generally. “Sure, goddam right,” muttered voices. “Well, I guess it's all off, then,” said the engineer. “No, it ain't,” said Toby, “reckon up yer wounded. The feller who's got the worst wounded gets the cognac. Ain't that fair?” “Sure.” “We've had seven fellers sent home already,” said the engineer. “We've had eight. Ain't we?” “Sure,” growled everybody in the room. “How bad was they?” “Two of 'em was blind,” said Toby. “Hell,” said the engineer, jumping to his feet as if taking a trick at poker. “We had a guy who was sent home without arms nor legs, and three fellers got t.b. from bein' gassed.” John Andrews had been sitting in a corner of the room. He got up. Something had made him think of the man he had known in the hospital who had said that was the life to make a feller feel fit. Getting up at three o'clock in the morning, you jumped out of bed just like a cat.... He remembered how the olive-drab trousers had dangled, empty from the man's chair. “That's nothing; one of our sergeants had to have a new nose grafted on....” The village street was dark and deeply rutted with mud. Andrews wandered up and down aimlessly. There was only one other cafe. That would be just like this one. He couldn't go back to the desolate barn where he slept. It would be too early to go to sleep. A cold wind blew down the street and the sky was full of vague movement of dark clouds. The partly-frozen mud clotted about his feet as he walked along; he could feel the water penetrating his shoes. Opposite the Y. M. C. A. hut at the end of the street he stopped. After a moment's indecision he gave a little laugh, and walked round to the back where the door of the “Y” man's room was. He knocked twice, half hoping there would be no reply. Sheffield's whining high-pitched voice said: “Who is it?” “Andrews.” “Come right in.... You're just the man I wanted to see.” Andrews stood with his hand on the knob. “Do sit down and make yourself right at home.” Spencer Sheffield was sitting at a little desk in a room with walls of unplaned boards and one small window. Behind the desk were piles of cracker boxes and cardboard cases of cigarettes and in the midst of them a little opening, like that of a railway ticket office, in the wall through which the “Y” man sold his commodities to the long lines of men who would stand for hours waiting meekly in the room beyond. Andrews was looking round for a chair. “Oh, I just forgot. I'm sitting in the only chair,” said Spencer Sheffield, laughing, twisting his small mouth into a shape like a camel's mouth and rolling about his large protruding eyes. “Oh, that's all right. What I wanted to ask you was: do you know anything about...?”