leading to the side-road.  Then the guns one by one wheeled to the right, the horses’ hoofs stamping into the damp ground as they turned, and became part of the procession.  Then the quartermaster and other N.C.O.’s and men joined; and last were Captain Resmith, attended by his trumpeter, and George.  Resmith looked over his shoulder at the Third Battery which surged behind.  There were nearly two hundred men and over a hundred and fifty horses and many vehicles in the Battery.  The Major was far out of sight, and the tail of the column was equally out of sight in the rear, for the total length of Major Craim’s cavalcade exceeded a mile; and of the Brigade three miles, and two other similar Brigades somewhere in the region of Wimbledon were participating in the grand Divisional trek.

Captain Resmith cantered ahead to a bend in the track, and anxiously watched a gun-team take the sharp curve, which was also a sharp slope.  The impression of superb, dangerous physical power was tremendous.  The distended nostrils of horses, the gliding of their muscles under the glossy skin, the muffled thud of their hoofs in the loose soil, the grimacing of the men as they used spur and thong, the fierce straining of straps and chains, the creaking, the grinding, and finally the swaying of the 90-millimetre gun, coddled and polished, as it swung helplessly forward, stern first, and its long nose describing an arc in the air behind—­these things marvellously quickened the blood.

“Good men!” said Captain Resmith, enthusiastic.  “It’s great, isn’t it?  You know, there’s nothing so fine as a battery—­nothing in the whole world.”

George heartily agreed with him.

“This is the best Battery in the Division,” said Resmith religiously.

And George was religiously convinced that it was.

He was astoundingly happy.  He thought, amazed, that he had never been so happy, or at any rate so uplifted, in all his life.  He simply could not comprehend his state of bliss, which had begun that morning at 6.30 when the grey-headed, simple-minded servant allotted to him had wakened him, according to instructions, with a mug of tea.  Perhaps it was the far, thin sound of bugles that produced the rapturous effect, or the fresh air blowing in through the broken pane of the hut, or the slanting sunlight, or the feeling that he had no responsibility and nothing to do but blindly obey orders.

He had gone to sleep as depressed as he was tired.  A sense of futility had got the better of him.  The excursion of the afternoon had certainly been ridiculous in a high degree.  He had hoped for a more useful evening.  Captain Resmith had indeed taken him to the horse-lines, and he had tried a mount which was very suitable, and Captain Resmith had said that he possessed a naturally good seat and hands, and had given him a few sagacious tips.  It was plain to him that Resmith had the Major’s orders to take him in tutelage and make an officer of him.