Lying stretched on his elbow he began to talk about himself. He was English-born and he had begun his career at a desk—staying there just long enough to save up his fare and a few pounds to start him in Canada. After that came a farm—to his thinking but a shade less narrow than the office; to be left for the rolling, the shifting life, the only life worth living. He had had his ups, he had had his downs—but always with his eyes on the distance. Ten fine years of it, American, African, Australian; the life independent where you shouldered your pack and gave men the go-by when you were sick of them. And then, in the summer of 1914, a fancy to see the Old Country. He had worked his passage homeward in a short-handed tramp and arrived at Tilbury on the day the Kaiser’s government sent its ultimatum to Russia. Four days later he was a soldier in the British Army, and a year or so later had a knee-cap damaged and a shoulder put out of action. They had patched him up carefully, made quite a decent job of him, and he walked and moved his left arm with comfort; but, adjudged unfit for the fighting line, he had done with the trenches for good. Permanent base now, with a cushy job at the office of the D.D. of Works. Filing and copying documents relating to hut construction; he had been fool enough to let out that he had had some small training as a clerk. "In a way," he said, chewing at a long blade of grass, "it’s a good thing I’ve got my stiff knee. If I could put the miles under me as I used to, I believe—I believe I’d go. It would come over me and I’d go. Not that I want to desert, but it might be too strong for me; I’ve always been my own master and I’ve always wanted to know what was on the other side of the hill. Straight on"—he pointed southward—"straight on, anywhere. The road—if you’ve once tramped it" ... He broke off and stared with his eyes on the distance and beyond it. After a minute or two of silence he asked William suddenly what had made him join the Army; and William gave him confidence for confidence, attracted he knew not why. The man’s craving for loneliness and bodily exertion was something he could not understand; but they were on common ground in their mutual rebellion against the weariness of daily life. They talked with long silences in between their speech, telling out their hearts to each other; or rather finding in each other’s presence an excuse for speaking their hearts. Later it seemed odd to William that though they spoke freely of their lives and their griefs it had never struck either of them to ask of the other his name. "So you joined up because of your wife," said the man who lay on his elbow. "Yes," William answered him, "I thought——" He did not finish the sentence; it wearied him now to remember what he had thought.