filled all sides of the parade ground, while the bugle blew
somewhere at the other end where the flag-pole was. Somehow it
made him think of the man behind the desk in the office of the
draft board who had said, handing him the papers sending him to
camp, "I wish I was going with you," and had held out a white bony
hand that Fuselli, after a moment's hesitation, had taken in his
own stubby brown hand. The man had added fervently, "It must be
grand, just grand, to feel the danger, the chance of being potted
any minute. Good luck, young feller.... Good luck." Fuselli
remembered unpleasantly his paper-white face and the greenish look
of his bald head; but the words had made him stride out of the
office sticking out his chest, brushing truculently past a
group of men in the door. Even now the memory of it, mixing with
the strains of the national anthem made him feel important,
truculent.

"Squads right!" same an order. Crunch, crunch, crunch in the
gravel. The companies were going back to their barracks. He wanted
to smile but he didn't dare. He wanted to smile because he had a
pass till midnight, because in ten minutes he'd be outside the
gates, outside the green fence and the sentries and the strands of
barbed wire. Crunch, crunch, crunch; oh, they were so slow in
getting back to the barracks and he was losing time, precious free
minutes. "Hep, hep, hep," cried the sergeant, glaring down the
ranks, with his aggressive bulldog expression, to where someone had
fallen out of step.

The company stood at attention in the dusk. Fuselli was biting the
inside of his lips with impatience. Minutes at last, as if
reluctantly, the sergeant sang out: