“And when your twelve years are up you get your pension and become the village bobby, and you can walk about the whole day.”

He’s already sweating on it. “And just you think how you’d be treated. Here a dram, there a pint. Everybody wants to be well in with a bobby.”

“You’ll never be a noncom though, Haie,” interrupts Kat.

Haie looks at him sadly and is silent. His thoughts still linger over the clear evenings in autumn, the Sundays in the heather, the village bells, the afternoons and evenings with the servant girls, the fried bacon and barley, the carefree hours in the alehouse⁠—

He can’t part with all these dreams so abruptly; he merely growls: “What silly questions you do ask.”

He pulls his shirt over his head and buttons up his tunic.

“What would you do, Tjaden?” asks Kropp.