His age might be forty, he looked fifty, a fatherly sort of man, a
real block of Caledonian Railway thrown, tartanised, into a trench.
"How are you, Jock?" I said. I had never met him before.
"Are you Pat MacGill?"
I nodded assent.
"Man, I've often heard of you, Pat," he went on, "I worked on the Sou'
West, and my brother's an engine driver on the Caly. He reads your
songs a'most every night. He says there are only two poets he'd give a
fling for--that's you and Anderson, the man who wrote _Cuddle Doon_."
"How do you like the trenches, Jock?"
"Not so bad, man, not so bad," he said.
"Killed any one yet?" I asked.
"Not yet," he answered in all seriousness. "But there's a sniper over
there," and he pointed a clean finger, quite untrenchy it was, towards
the enemy's lines, "And he's fired three at me."
"At you?" I asked.
"Ay, and I sent him five back ----" (p. 237)
"And didn't do him in?" I asked.
"Not yet, but if I get another two or three at him, I'll not give much
for his chance."
"Have you seen him?" I asked, marvelling that Big Jock had already
seen a sniper.
"No, but I heard the shots go off."
A rifle shot is the most deceptive thing in the world, so, like an old
soldier wise in the work, I smiled under my hand.
I don't believe that Big Jock has killed his sniper yet, but it has
been good to see him. When we meet he says, "What about the Caly,
Pat?" and I answer, "What about the Sou' West, Jock?"
On the first Sunday after Trinity we marched out from another small
village in the hot afternoon.
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