"Were you my son, my lad, I'd soon settle you," Grant Maitland would
say, when the boy was ready to go back to his school. "You will make a
mess of your life unless you can learn to stick at your job. The roads
are full of clever tramps, remember that, my boy."

But Tony only smiled his brilliant smile at him, as he took his pay
envelope, which burned a hole in his pocket till he had done with it.
When the next holiday came round Tony would present himself for a job
with Jack Maitland to plead for him. For to Tony Jack was as king, to
whom he gave passionate loyalty without stint or measure. And thus for
his son Jack's sake, Jack's father took Tony on again, resolved to make
another effort to make something out of him.

The bond between the two boys was hard to analyse. In games at Public
and High School Jack was always Captain and Tony his right-hand man,
held to his place and his training partly by his admiring devotion to
his Captain but more by a wholesome dread of the inexorable disciplinary
measures which slackness or trifling with the rules of the game would
inevitably bring him. Jack Maitland was the one being in Tony's
world who could put lasting fear into his soul or steadiness into his
practice. But even Jack at times failed.

Then when both were eighteen they went to the War, Jack as an Officer,
Tony as a Non-Commissioned Officer in the same Battalion, Jack hating
the bloody business but resolute to play this great game of duty as he
played all games for all that was in him, Tony aglow at first with the
movement and glitter and later mad with the lust for deadly daring
that was native to his Keltic Gallic soul. They returned with their
respective decorations of D. S. O. and Military Medal and each with the