back philosophically on his old catchword. 'It takes you hard,
because you're young; and it takes you harder because you had fed
yourself up on dreams o' glory, and such-like.'

'Well?'

'Well, and you have to get over it, that's all. A man can't properly
call himself a soldier till he's learnt to get over it.'

'If that's all, the battalion is qualifyin' fast!' Corporal Sam
retorted bitterly, and sat up, blinking in the strong sunlight.
Then, as Sergeant Wilkes made no reply, or perhaps because he guessed
something in Sergeant Wilkes's averted face, a sudden compunction
seized him. 'You feel it too?'

'I got to, after all my trouble,' answered Sergeant Wilkes brusquely.

'I'm sorry. Look here--I wish you'd turn your face about--it's worse
for you and yet you get over it, as you say. How the devil do you
manage?'

Still for a while Sergeant Wilkes leaned back without making reply.
But of a sudden he, too, sat upright, drew down the peak of his shako
to shade his eyes, and drawing his pipe from his mouth, jerked the
stem of it to indicate a figure slowly crossing a rise of the
sandhills between them and the estuary.

'You see that man?'

'To be sure I do. An officer, and in the R.A.--curse them!--though I