He came back, covered with blood, but unwounded. In spite of all the unpleasant sights in a crumpled trench, he had the heart to smile when in the middle of the night one of the sergeants approached him with an amiable suggestion.

“Don’t you think it would be a good time, sir, to make a slight attack upon the enemy?”

There was something in those words, “a slight attack,” which is irresistibly comic to any of us who know the conditions of modern trench war. But they were not spoken in jest.

So the cavalry did its “bit” again, though not as cavalry, and I saw some of them when they came back, and they were glad to have gone through that bloody business so that no man might fling a scornful word as they passed with their horses.

“It is queer,” said my friend, “how we go from this place of peace to the battlefield, and then come back for a spell before going up again. It is like passing from one life to another.”