the murmurs of the air. This--this is the reality. That was only an echo
from a bad dream from which we have awakened.

And when an hour or two later we reach the little village by the sea we
rush for the letters that await us with eager curiosity. There is silence
in the room as each of us devours the budget of news awaiting us. I am
vaguely conscious as I read that some one has left the room with a sense of
haste. I go up to my bedroom, and when I return the sitting-room is empty
save for one figure. I see at a glance that something has happened.

"Robert has been killed in battle," he says. How near the sound of the guns
had come!




ON SHORT LEGS AND LONG LEGS


A day or two ago a soldier, returned from the front, was loudly inveighing
in a railway carriage against the bumptiousness and harshness of the
captain under whom he had served. "Let me git 'im over 'ere," he said, "and
I'll lay 'im out--see if I don't. I've 'ad enough of 'is bullyin'. It ain't
even as if 'e was a decent figure of a man. 'E don't stand more'n
five-feet-two. I could knock 'im out with one 'and, and I'd 'ave done it
before now only you mustn't out there. If you did you'd get a pound o' lead
pumped into you."

Now, I dare say little five-feet-two deserved all that was said of him, and
all he will get by way of punishment; but the point about the remark that