The following afternoon Denver, strolling back from the town, was hailed by a man in khaki, standing in the door of his house. He knew the man well, Vane, by name—had dined with him often in the days when he was in training himself. A quiet man, with a pleasant wife and two children. Vane was a stockbroker by trade: and just before Jim went out he had enlisted.

"Come in and have a gargle. I've just got back on short leave." Vane came to the gate.

"Good," Jim answered. "Mrs. Vane must be pleased." They strolled up the drive and in through the door. "You're looking very fit, old man. Flanders seems to suit you."

"My dear fellow, it does. It's the goods. I never knew what living was before. The thought of that cursed office makes me tired—and once"—he shrugged his shoulders—"it filled my life. Say when."

"Cheer oh!" They clinked glasses. "I thought you were taking a commission."

"I am—very shortly. The colonel has recommended me for one, and I gather the powers that be approve. But in a way I'm sorry, you know. I've got a great pal in my section—who kept a whelk stall down in Whitechapel."

"They're the sort," laughed Jim. "The Cockney takes some beating."

"This bird's a flier. We had quite a cheery little show the other night, just him and me. About a week ago we were up in the trenches—bored stiff, and yet happy in a way, you know, when Master Boche started to register.[1] I suppose it was a new battery or something, but they were using crumps, not shrapnel. They weren't very big, but they were very close—and they got closer. You know that nasty droning noise, then the hell of an explosion—that great column of blackish yellow smoke, and the bits pinging through the air overhead."

"I do," remarked Jim tersely.

Vane laughed. "Well, he got a bracket; the first one was fifty yards short of the trench, and the second was a hundred yards over. Then he started to come back—always in the same line; and the line passed straight through our bit of the trench.

"''Ere, wot yer doing, you perishers? Sargint, go and stop 'em. Tell 'em I've been appointed purveyor of winkles to the Royal 'Ouse of the 'Un Emperor.' Our friend of the whelk stall was surveying the scene with intense disfavour. A great mass of smoke belched up from the ground twenty yards away, and he ducked instinctively. Then we waited—fifteen seconds about was the interval between shots. The men were a bit white about the gills—and, well the feeling in the pit of my tummy was what is known as wobbly. You know that feeling too?"

"I do," remarked Jim even more tersely.

Vane finished his drink. "Then it came, and we cowered. There was a roar like nothing on earth—the back of the trench collapsed, and the whole lot of us were buried. If the shell had been five yards short, it would have burst in the trench, and my whelk friend would have whelked no more."

Vane laughed. "We emerged, plucking mud from our mouths, and cursed. The Hun apparently was satisfied and stopped. The only person who wasn't satisfied was the purveyor of winkles to the Royal 'Ouse. He brooded through the day, but towards the evening he became more cheerful.

"'Look 'ere,' he said to me, ''ave you ever killed a 'Un?'

"'I think I did once,' I said. 'A fat man with a nasty face.'

"'Oh! you 'ave, 'ave you? Well, wot abaht killing one to-night. If they thinks I'm going to stand that sort of thing, they're —— —— wrong.' The language was the language of Whitechapel, but the sentiments were the sentiments of even the most rabid purist of speech.

"To cut a long story short, we went. And we were very lucky."

"You bumped your face into 'em, did you?" asked Jim, interested.

"We did. Man, it was a grand little scrap while it lasted, and it was the first one I'd had. It won't be the last."

"Did you kill your men?"

"Did we not? Welks brained his with the butt of his gun; and I did the trick with a bayonet." Vane became a little apologetic. "You know it was only my first, and I can't get it out of my mind." Then his eyes shone again. "To feel that steel go in—Good God! man—it was IT: it was...."

Then came the interruption. "Dear," said a voice at the door, "the children are in bed; will you go up and say good night."... Thus the second incident....

As I said, taken separately the two incidents mean but little: taken together—there is humour: the whole humour of war.

An itinerant fishmonger and a worthy stockbroker are inculcated with wonderful ideals in order to fit them for sallying forth at night and killing complete strangers. And they revel in it....

The highest form of emotionalism on one hand: a hole in the ground full of bluebottles and smells on the other....

War ... war in the twentieth century.

But there is nothing incompatible in it: it is only strange when analysed in cold blood. And Jim Denver, as I have said, was sane again: while Vane, the stockbroker, was still mad.

In fact, it is quite possible that the peculiar significance of the interruption in his story never struck him: that he never noticed the Contrast.

And what is going to be the result of it all on the Vanes of England? "Once the office filled my life." No man can go to the land of Topsy Turvy and come back the same—for good or ill it will change him. Though the madness leave him and sanity return, it will not be the same sanity. Will he ever be content to settle down again after—the lawyer, the stockbroker, the small clerk? Back to the old dull routine, the same old train in the morning, the same deadly office, the same old home each evening. It hardly applies to the Jim Denvers—the men of money: but what of the others?

Will the scales have dropped from the eyes of the men who have really been through it? Shall we ever get back to the same old way? Heaven knows—but let us hope not. Anyway, it is all mere idle conjecture—and a digression to boot.

For the benefit of the uninitiated, let me explain that the process of registering consists of finding the exact range to a certain object from a particular gun or battery. To find this range it is necessary to obtain what is known as a bracket: i.e. one burst beyond the object, and one burst short. The range is then known to lie between these two: and by a little adjustment the exact distance can be found.