Perhaps it may have been the effect of Stenlake's service, or it may have been the news that we were to go into the firing line the next day, that made the men seek their dugouts early that Sunday evening. But there was something heavy in the air that night. For almost a week we had been comparatively safe in dugouts. Tomorrow we were again to go into the firing line and wait impotently while our number was reduced gradually but pitilessly. The hopelessness of the thing seemed clearer that evening than any other time we had been there. Simpson, "the Man with the Donkeys," had been killed that day. After a whole summer in which he seemed to be impervious to bullets, a stray bullet had caught him in the heart on his way down Shrapnel Valley with a consignment of wounded. Simpson had been so much a part of the Peninsular life that it was hard to realize that he had gone to swell the list of heroes that Australia has so much cause to be proud of. A Company had suffered heavily in the front line trenches that day. A number of stretchers had passed down the road that ran in front of our dugouts, with A Company men for the dressing station on the beach. Snipers had been busy. From the A Company stretcher-bearers came news that others had been killed. One piece of news filtered slowly down to us that evening, that had an unaccountably strange effect on the men of B Company. Sam Lodge had been killed. Sam Lodge was perhaps the most widely known man in the whole regiment. There were very few Newfoundlanders who did not think kindly of the big, quiet, reliable looking college man. He had enlisted at the very first call for volunteers. Other men had been killed that day; and since the regiment had been at Gallipoli, men had stood by while their dugout mates were torn by shrapnel or sank down moaning, with a sniper's bullet in the brain; but nothing had ever had the same effect, at any rate on the men of our company, as the news that Sam Lodge had been killed that day. Perhaps it was that everybody knew him. Other nights men had crowded around the fire, telling stories, exchanging gossip, or singing. To-night all was quiet; there was not even the sound of men creeping about from dugout to dugout, visiting chums. Suddenly, from away up on the extreme right end of the line of dugouts, came the sound of a clear tenor voice, singing, "Tenting To-night on the Old Camp Ground." Never have I heard anything so mournful. It is impossible to describe the penetrating pathos of the old Civil War song. Slowly the singer continued, amidst a profound hush. His voice sank, until one could scarcely catch the words when he sang, "Waiting for the war to cease." At last he finished. There was scarcely a stir, as the men dropped off to sleep.