accoutrements into place, and shifted their pieces and got ready for
the order to march, and the band began again with the same quickstep
which the fusillade had interrupted.

The figure still lay on the grass untouched, and no one seemed to
remember that it had walked there of itself, or noticed that the
cigarette still burned, a tiny ring of living fire, at the place
where the figure had first stood.

The figure was a thing of the past, and the squad shook itself like a
great snake, and then broke into little pieces and started off
jauntily, stumbling in the high grass and striving to keep step to
the music.

The officers led it past the figure in the linen suit, and so close
to it that the file closers had to part with the column to avoid
treading on it. Each soldier as he passed turned and looked down on
it, some craning their necks curiously, others giving a careless
glance, and some without any interest at all, as they would have
looked at a house by the roadside, or a hole in the road.

One young soldier caught his foot in a trailing vine, just opposite
to it, and fell. He grew very red when his comrades giggled at him
for his awkwardness. The crowd of sleepy spectators fell in on
either side of the band. They, too, had forgotten it, and the
priests put their vestments back in the bag and wrapped their heavy
cloaks about them, and hurried off after the others.

Every one seemed to have forgotten it except two men, who came slowly
towards it from the town, driving a bullock-cart that bore an