skeletons. Above his head great piled, rose-tinted clouds were
moving slowly across the immeasurable free sky. His glance slid
down the sky to some tall trees that flamed bright yellow with
autumn outside the camp limits, and then to the end of the long
street of barracks, where was a picket fence and a sentry walking
to and fro, to and fro. His brows contracted for a moment. Then he
walked with a sort of swagger towards the fourth building to the
right.



John Andrews was washing windows. He stood in dirty blue denims at
the top of a ladder, smearing with a soapy cloth the small panes
of the barrack windows. His nostrils were full of a smell of dust
and of the sandy quality of the soap. A little man with one lined
greyish-red cheek puffed out by tobacco followed him up also on a
ladder, polishing the panes with a dry cloth till they shone and
reflected the mottled cloudy sky. Andrews's legs were tired from
climbing up and down the ladder, his hands were sore from the
grittiness of the soap; as he worked he looked down, without
thinking, on rows of cots where the blankets were all folded the
same way, on some of which men were sprawled in attitudes of utter
relaxation. He kept remarking to himself how strange it was that
he was not thinking of anything. In the last few days his mind
seemed to have become a hard meaningless core.

"How long do we have to do this?" he asked the man who was working
with him. The man went on chewing, so that Andrews thought he was
not going to answer at all. He was just beginning to speak again
when the man, balancing thoughtfully on top of his ladder, drawled