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Rh brick-bats as they sat in an. "I guess your average love tosh leaves me like a one-eyed codfish; but there's a bit I've got in me head writ by some joker who knows me and the likes o' me.

Shorty contemplatively finished his beer. "'The wild is calling.' Ever felt that call, kid?"

"Can't say I have, Shorty." His tone was humble; gone was the pathetic arrogance that had been the pride of Mogg's; in its place the beginnings of the realisation of his utter futility had come, coupled with a profound hero worship for the man who had condescended to notice him. "When are you going to teach me that sniping game?"

The real sniping commander of the battalion—I mean no disrespect to the worthy young officer who officially filled that position—looked at the eager face opposite him and laughed.

"You'd better quit it, son. Why, to start with, you're frightened of the dark."

"I'm damned if I am." The aggrieved Percy waxed indignant.

"Oh, cut it out! I don't mean you're frightened of going to bed in the dark, or that you want a night-light or a nurse. But yours is a town dark: standing under lamps gettin' the glad from a passing skirt. But in the real dark, when it's pressing round you like a blanket, and there are things moving, and people breathing near by, and you don't know whether