the passers-by with a pair of fawn gaiters, borrowed from a corpse.
Barque, who poses as a resourceful man, full of ideas--and Heaven
knows what a bore it makes of him at times!--has white calves, for
he wrapped surgical bandages round his leg-cloths to preserve them,
a snowy souvenir at his latter end of the cotton cap at the other,
which protrudes below his helmet and is left behind in its turn by a
saucy red tassel. Poterloo has been walking about for a month in the
boots of a German soldier, nearly new, and with horseshoes on the
heels. Caron entrusted them to Poterloo when he was sent back on
account of his arm. Caron had taken them himself from a Bavarian
machine-gunner, knocked out near the Pylones road. I can hear
Caron telling about it yet--

"Old man, he was there, his buttocks in a hole, doubled up, gaping
at the sky with his legs in the air, and his pumps offered
themselves to me with an air that meant they were worth my while. 'A
tight fit,' says I. But you talk about a job to bring those
beetle-crushers of his away! I worked on top of him, tugging,
twisting and shaking, for half an hour and no lie about it. With his
feet gone quite stiff, the patient didn't help me a bit. Then at
last the legs of it--they'd been pulled about so--came unstuck at
the knees, and his breeks tore away, and all the lot came, flop!
There was me, all of a sudden, with a full boot in each fist. The
legs and feet had to be emptied out."

"You're going it a bit strong!"

"Ask Euterpe the cyclist if it isn't true. I tell you he did it
along of me, too. We shoved our arms inside the boots and pulled out
of 'em some bones and bits of sock and bits of feet. But look if