seethes with disorder, during which the troops of the front line lie apprehensively to their arms, fearing that they are surrounded; whilst the offending waggon, hurling itself at length into a water-course, comes to rest in a hideous welter of splinters and mangled beasts.1 minutes the whole valley soldiers who have almost to a man passed the Fifth Standard of the State Schools. Another warning, therefore, to the General Officer of today. Let him remember that his men are thinking, halfbakedly thinking, scrutinising him and his operations by the dim light of primary education, weighing their own chances in the wavering balance of each moment, and casting up their own value by the faked assessment of their local Cleen. Let him therefore be very wary of his troops, not in the heat of the fight for there, please the Lord, the smeary veneer will melt and vanish as of yore, revealing the man beneathbut in the exhausting intervals between fights, when efficiency burns low, and there is time. for what in the rank-andfile of humanity passes for "thought." Here was such an occasion, and the West Mayos, as has been said, from constitutional causes, were in rather worse mental fettle than All the above narration, so large a slice of a "short story," would be very bad art had it, as it would seem, nothing to do with Patrick Brade. But as a matter of fact it had much to do with that private soldier of the West Mayo Regiment, for, as with the stampeding oxen, these events were rapidly producing a crisis in his soul. The West Mayos, a battalion composed almost entirely of excitable youngsters driven from their native bogs by want and what they deemed oppression, shared in double measure every ill, as they would have similarly magnified every success, of the force of which they were a unit. And there was, as has been seen, much ill. The nerves and bodies, even of the imperturbable south British regiments, the Warmshires and the Royal Arables, for instance, were at the verge of endurance. Apart from the discomforts, the alarums and excursions, there was a feeling abroad that the "show was being badly run," and this is even more depressing than fear or starvation to other any the corps, dullest of which lay somewhat desponding and distrustful along the windy ridges. And by far the unhappiest man in the West Mayo was this same Patrick Brade. Naturally of fierce and gloomy temper, a Kelt ruined by generations of intemperance, suffering, and political anger amounting almost to madness, he had at this juncture additional reason for being at his worst. Secretly sympathising with the en 1 This incident is a fact. emy because they were the enemy, he hated the war; he hated the discipline, the enforced obedience to orders which brought but danger and discomfort to himself,-in short, there was nothing connected with military service which he did not hate. But most of all he hated his own Captain, one Maguire of Ballaclanish, and this for a variety of reasons. In the first place, Maguire was the son of the agent to whom Brade's family had for forty years owed their agrarian grudges, until a bullet from behind a wall had laid the stern old man low. The boy Maguire had been his father's usual companion on his rides and drives about the wild west Irish estate, the spectator, and, in the eyes of the peasantry, part author author by inheritance, of their woes. But apart from this, Maguire was undoubtedly a bad officer. Of ungovernable temper, ill brought up and unversed in the restraints of a gentleman, in barracks he harassed his men with nagging, in the field confused them by Bull of Bashan orders, and angered them by vituperations addressed by name, than which private soldiers hold no insult more grievous. And none had been more often the target of the officer's bolts than Brade, whose natural stupidity conspiring with his lack of zeal led him invariably to misinterpret orders which were, in truth, usually obscurely delivered by Maguire, under the common delusion that plans so clear to himself, their deviser, must be patent to all who had to carry them out. Brade, in fact, had become his Captain's butt, and thence, by a process of devolution frequent enough in such cases, the butt of any one who desired to rid himself safely of either a joke or a curse. hero. For the man was no Bodies created in an orgy of overproof spirits, and thereafter nurtured mainly on inferior potatoes, are not the chosen dwelling-places of valour. And a bully or a practical joker was all the safer with Brade, because the latter had long since come to assign every insult or act of oppression not to its immediate or momentary author, but to Maguire. Gradually, in fact, the thought had shaped itself in Brade's mind that were his captain to be cut off, the troubles of which he was the root would necessarily vanish with him. This idea had existed only in general form as a consummation ardently to be desired, until on this very day the Devil, keen watcher for the souls of men, had shot a startling hint which in an instant found its mark. It had happened that during the skirmishing a rifle accidentally let off by a stumbling soldier had sent a bullet screaming close past the cheek of Maguire, who was leading— so close that it stroked the soft flesh like a feather as it passed. The incident had been observed but by three persons,— by the horror-struck offender himself, of course by Maguire, whose volley of abuse went far to banish the shooter's regret, scene. and by Brade. Even in that resounding din, a suffocating silence seemed to fall upon the The blazing sunshine, the khaki figures, the crackling mimosas, the dusty belching of the shrapnel, all faded in an instant from his gaze, and in their place appeared a pallid, moonlight night, a jagged-topped stone wall bounding a country road, a knot of cowering figures, and finally the form of an old, white-bearded man toppling sideways from a shying horse. Why not? As the father had fallen, so let the son fall, a victim of his victims. Twice Brade's rifle went to his shoulder and peeped through the scrub, twice the sights wobbled on the officer's back between the collar and the brown-belted waist; twice it fell again, shaking so violently that the slingrings rattled against the hard walnut. Murder, mainly because of the definiteness of it, is a terrible job to a man who has never in his life performed a single complete, decisive, and irrevocable action, one with no single loophole or might-havebeen about it. Besides, a miss or a wounding shot would be fatal, even a kill might recoil on his own head. The thickets were full of men; had he been noticed? Murphy, blundering up alongside, certainly looked queerly at him, and there was an ominous sound in the Colour - Sergeant's "Now, Brade, get on!" and a terrible feeling in his heavy hand as the N.C.O., passing along the company to beat up the laggards, pushed him for an in stant by the shoulder. Brade ventured no more that day, though his eyes were seldom off Maguire. After a time the officer's broad back seemed to become the only object in the. field for him. He could have sworn that a painted target, like that at the 200 yards practice - butt, appeared on it, with outer and inner rings complete, and a little black three-inch bull's-eye just in the hollow between the shoulders. Brade was a good shot; he had often reeled off his "possible at just such a mark. He felt he could not miss it; if only he dared! But he only gazed, and at nightfall lay down with his brain on fire. He slept not at all, unless that were sleep in which his eyes stared incessantly along a dark tube a hundred yards long at a round black spot which every now and then turned white as the marker's disc covered it, signalling "a bull!" He could not miss. He scarcely heard the singing gusts. During the alarm caused by the stampeding waggon he was almost the only man of the force who remained on the ground. Only once did he start, and that was when, in the quiet succeeding the turmoil, Maguire's rough voice rose in abuse as he herded his scattered company together. The bull's-eye became bigger, the long tube longer. He could not miss; nor would he. Dawn, usually the quietest moment of a battlefield, is also the most intense, for much may have happened in the night, and both sides are sure to have been waiting for it, to peer warily at the other's dispositions. So peering, the scouts of the attack suddenly discovered a band of the enemy who, having mistimed the daylight as they stole forward to reconnoitre, dared not fall back, but lay pressed to the ground amongst the rocks close in front. As usual, their numbers were much exaggerated, and a somewhat alarming report reached the brigadier as he was about to attempt his morning wash in a disused beef-tin. Very soon a staff-officer, his horse's hoofs striking fireworks in the half light, galloped up to the foot of the West Mayos' crest-line, and inquired for the Colonel. "Good morning, sir; a nice morning. The West Mayos will charge, sir!" The Colonel is taken by surprise. Charging, unseen by him since '78, had been completely banished from his philosophy in this sneaky, crawling campaign. He did not quite know how to set about it,-whether merely to "pass the word," or to hurl himself, shouting, at the head of his men, sword in hand, pointing to victory or Westminster Abbey. The latter seemed in that silence a too noisy, eke too "gallery" thing to do; too like a picture withal, and too unlike Colonel the Honourable Dennis Byrne of the Land and Sea Services Club, Pall Mall. So he passed the word to the Adjutant, who, equally posed, did his best to distribute it amongst as many of the Captains of the front line as he could reach. omitted, however, to say what was to be charged, and, as few had been made aware of the proximity of the enemy, the result was merely a ragged, unenthusiastic, silent run forward by perhaps 150 men out of the whole line lying along the crest. their relief Nothing particular being in sight the advance soon hesitated, then stopped, and the men dropped to earth in the open. Now the enemy, who, pressed flat as flounders to the earth, had been momentarily expecting an overwhelming onrush, in at this meagre display did a foolish thing. They opened fire on the exposed detachment, and in an instant the charm was broken. A yell of "Charge!" "Charge!" "Charge!" broke from the silent main body behind. A thousand yellow helmets bounced up against the sky, and, like a pack of wolves, the Irish came storming across the flat, poured over both friendly and hostile detachments, and rolled on howling straight for the enemy's mainwork behind. For a space the trenches, taken by surprise, were silent; then a crack like the rending of a cliff burst in the faces of the assault. The irregular line, gapped by losses, splintered and checked before it, and began to drift about in groups, some sideways, some forward, the men shooting incessantly whichever way they ran. In the van, shouting fiercely, strode Maguire, a noble figure. He was almost alone, for he had He far outstripped all of his more heavily weighted men-all but one. Close behind him scuttled a bent, bobbing figure. It was Brade, and had there been in that pandemonium any one to note, it would have appeared marvellous how he kept pace with his officer, seeing that he continually dropped on the knee to fire a shot-a shot not snapped wildly as the others were doing, but carefully sighted. Had there, again, been any to hear, the great sob which followed each discharge would have had had a peculiar sound, even in a scene where most men make strange noises, To himself Brade seemed still to be asleep. He was conscious of nothing about him save a neat round target seen through a V-shaped slip of blued steel, and, as in dreams, everything seemed powerless and worrying. His bullets must be made of dough, his powder of sawdust, for the little bull'seye seemed strangely hard to hit. Would Maguire never drop? Ah! the back-sight had shifted, he was shooting too high. Another round, the officer flung up his arms with a scream and fell forward on his face, a kick or two like that of a swimmer, and he stirred no more. And Brade, too, flinging away his rifle, sank to the ground, babbling and shuddering like a demented child. Soon after silence fell upon the field, for the enemy, not waiting for close quarters, had evacuated their position, and were already invisible when the troops jumped like hurdlers over the earthen parapet and down into the messy, smelly drain, such as a trench soon becomes under fire. In the wake of the assault the stretcher-bearers began to wander about, and it was not long before Brade's twitching body attracted the attention of a pair of them. The man, pressed face downwards, gripping at the earth with his nails, showed all the signs of one badly wounded, and the bearers, depositing their litter beside him, prepared to lift him in, paying little heed at first-for they were well used to such soundsto his interminable muttering. When they gently turned him over to look for his hurt, hardened as they were to wrecked humanity, they started at the look on Brade's face. But there was not a sign of blood, and the bearers began to think that they were wasting their time on one of those cases, not new to them, of men maddened by fear or fury at the crisis of an attack. "Wot's up!" they demanded. "I've got 'im, got 'im, got 'im," chattered Brade; "got 'im!" he suddenly roared in their faces, "got 'im, I tell ye!" and he sprang to his feet, the bearers backing in alarm. "Got 'em, you mean," growled one of them. "Got the D.T.'s, I should say. Got 'oo, you silly blighter?" "Why, Maguire, av coorse," replied Brade in a puzzled voice; "phwat other should I get? I've shot 'im clane and clever between the shoulders, and there 'e lies." The three men moved across to the body of the fallen officer. Sure enough, a terrible wound gaped in the |