Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/129

Rh was detached from his battery for staff duties, and was dissatisfied until he had succeeded in returning to his old post of danger. Just the same scrupulous spirit had moved him years before when he gave up a permanent appointment sans duties, because there was no way in which he could earn or was expected to earn his pay. There were things he could not endure; no one who knew him could be surprised.' He volunteered for the dangerous work of serving on an observation post, and was killed by a shell.

Remembering him now, one recalls the subdued, deliberate voice, the slow, flickering smile, the intentness of his listening face, the quiet, conversational humour that was always at its best in small companies, and recalls, too, how there was mostly about him that air of settled thoughtfulness, easily mistaken for melancholy, which comes upon men given to solitary walks and lonely self-communings. His solitary country walks, in sun or rain or wind, the things he saw, people he met, dreams he had and all his lonely