Warrener of the Naval Brigade, who brought me the news.

"Sorry to hear it? Gad! I shouldn't be. The place has got a
different look about it when there are women-folk around. They are
so jolly clever in their ways--worth ten of your red-cross
ruffians."

"That is as may be," I answered, breaking open the case of whisky
which Sammy had brought up on the carriage of his machine-gun for my
private consumption.

He was taking this machine-gun up to the front, and mighty proud he
was of it.

"A clever gun," he called it; "an almighty clever gun."

He had ridden alongside of it--sitting on the top of his horse as
sailors do--through seventy miles of desert without a halt; watching
over it and tending it as he might have watched and tended his
mother, or perhaps some other woman.

"Gad! doctor," he exclaimed, kicking out his sturdy legs, and
contemplating with some satisfaction the yellow hide top-boots which
he had bought at the Army and Navy Stores. (I know the boots well,
and--avoid them.) "Gad! doctor, you should see that gun on the war-
path. Travels as light as a tricycle. And when she begins to talk-
-my stars! Click-click-click-click! For all the world like a
steam-launch's engine--mowing 'em down all the time. No work for
you there. It will be no use you and your satellites progging about
with skewers for the bullet. Look at the other side, my boy, and