sedentary habits and caustic temperament, is not merely hopelessly
wrong: it is grossly unjust. Sometimes he goes for a walk--under some
such circumstances as the following.

The night is as black as Tartarus, and it is raining heavily. Brother
Boche, a prey to nervous qualms, is keeping his courage up by
distributing shrapnel along our communication-trenches. Signal-wires
are peculiarly vulnerable to shrapnel. Consequently no one in the
Battalion Signal Station is particularly surprised when the line to
"Akk" Company suddenly ceases to perform its functions.

Signal-Sergeant M'Micking tests the instrument, glances over his
shoulder, and observes,--

"Line BX is gone, some place or other. Away you, Duncan, and sorrt
it!"

Mr. Duncan, who has been sitting hunched over a telephone, temporarily
quiescent, smoking a woodbine, heaves a resigned sigh, extinguishes the
woodbine and places it behind his ear; hitches his repairing-wallet
nonchalantly over his shoulder, and departs into the night--there to
grope in several inches of mud for the two broken ends of the wire,
which may be lying fifty yards apart. Having found them, he proceeds to
effect a junction, his progress being impeded from time to time by
further bursts of shrapnel. This done, he tests the new connection,
relights his woodbine, and splashes his way back to Headquarters. That
is a Buzzer's normal method of obtaining fresh air and exercise.

More than that. He is the one man in the Army who can fairly describe
himself as indispensable.