It took three days to concentrate the four brigades of Southdown Artillery at Hangest.

Concentration concluded, there followed a period of desultory “training”—taken with immense and harassing seriousness by Lt.-Colonel Revelsworth, a dapper arrogant-looking man of forty-five, very different from the Weasel; slightly less seriously by his subordinates.

Fortunately, the Anglo-Saxon is not imaginative. Neither officers nor men of “Beer” Battery bothered as they went about their lawful (or unlawful) business, to consider the near future. To be out of action, away from the sound of guns, sufficed them.

Thus they waited—five days—six days—a week and a week-end; till there came, one warm summer’s evening while they sat at poker, a very affairÉ Purves, second star newly on his sleeve, with orders that, “The Colonel would like to see all available officers at Headquarters immediately.”

“Confound it,” said Lodden. “I’ve never been in such amazing luck.”

“Never bring messages like that yourself,” whispered Peter to Purves as they strolled across the cobbled courtyard to Headquarters. “What’s it all about?”

“Only a pi-jaw. We’re going into action tomorrow.”

And a “pi-jaw,” as Purves irreverently described it, they got.

Listening to it, Peter began to think of the Brigade in its Brighton days. So many of the faces about him were new since then: yet the Brigade, the Fourth Southdown Brigade, R.F.A.—the “Virgin-bosom” Brigade as Stark used to call them every time his meticulous recommendations for honours were struck out by the bemedalled Staff—still lived. The thing he, Peter, had helped to make, went on ... went on, and would go on, right to the finish.... “A long wai ter get ter Berlin!” He seemed to hear his Cockneys again,—singing.

“So you see, when we begin moving up into action tomorrow,” interrupted Revelsworth’s voice....

Peter looked round him at the mute expressionless faces above the khaki collars. There were a few of the “old gang” still. Lodden, Conway, Purves, Pettigrew and Straker, “Brat” Archdale, (acting orderly officer, grown from blushing boy to hollow-cheeked young man), Merrilees, solemn as an owl, unaltered.... Eight, including himself, nine. Nine out of twenty six!

How many of those nine would be left after this new show? Eight at most! One of them was done for already; couldn’t hope to last more than a month. And that one of them was himself.... Still, nobody need know about that till he came out of action.... If he came out of action....

For Peter’s cough, the cough that drove him, hacking and spitting, night after night—gum-booted, “British Warm” over his pyjamas—out of the stifling room he shared with Pettigrew into the moonlight, was not the result of over-smoking. ... Rolleston, the kindly diffident “general practitioner” who doctored Colonel Brasenose’s Brigade, had told Peter that much; told it him unconsciously.

They had met quite by accident, that very afternoon; gone to Rolleston’s “surgery.” Peter, accepting a drink, choked over it; put his handkerchief to his mouth.

“None of my business of course,” the doctor had ventured, “but if I were you I’d consult Laurillard about that wheeze of yours. Never been gassed, have you? Slightly, I mean.”

Peter kept silence.

“Funny stuff, gas,” went on the doctor. “I had a case of it before I came out, while I was still in civilian practice. A young Canadian came to me with a frightful cough—rather like that cough of yours, by the way. I tested for tubercle, of course. Not a trace. Then he began talking about the first gas-attack; said he’d been in it. That put me on the track....”

“But surely,” interrupted Peter, “after all that time....”

“Oh, he wasn’t gassed, in the Army sense of the word; but there’s no doubt in my mind that a tiny molecule of chlorine must have lodged in his left lung, and started the irritation....”

“Did you cure him?”

“Oh, yes. But it took rather a long time. Fresh air and no exercise. Lucky he came to me when he did. Lungs are ticklish organs. If you once start ’em downhill, they take a lot of pulling back. Besides, you never know when that sort of thing won’t turn to consumption: the tubercle bacillus doesn’t take long to find a weak spot.... Still, if you’ve never been actually in the gas-cloud....”

“No, I’ve never been actually in the gas-cloud.” Peter had lied mechanically. His was not the breed which “goes sick” on the eve of an action....

Revelsworth’s voice interrupted musing. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he was saying, “I don’t think there’s anything else—except that I should like officers to wear full equipment for tomorrow’s march.”