“They’re putting away a bloomin’ Jock,” remarks a gentleman with an empty sleeve.

“And very nice, too!” responds another on crutches, as the firing party present arms with creditable precision.  “Not ’arf a bad bit of eye-wash at all for a bandy-legged lot of coal-shovellers.”

“That lot’s out of K(1),” explains a well-informed invalid with his head in bandages.  “Pretty ‘ot stuff they’re gettin’. Tres moutarde! Now we’re off.”

The signal is passed up the road to the band, who are waiting at the head of the procession, and the pipes break into a lament.  Corporals step forward and lay four wreaths upon the coffin—­one from each company.  Not a man in the battalion has failed to contribute his penny to those wreaths; and pennies are not too common with us, especially on a Thursday, which comes just before payday.  The British private is commonly reputed to spend all, or most of, his pocket-money upon beer.  But I can tell you this, that if you give him his choice between buying himself a pint of beer and subscribing to a wreath, he will most decidedly go thirsty.

The serio-comic charioteer gives his reins a twitch, the horses wake up, and the gun-carriage begins to move slowly along the lane of mourners.  As the dead private passes on his way the walls of the lane melt, and his comrades fall into their usual fours behind the gun-carriage.

So we pass up the hill towards the military cemetery, with the pipes wailing their hearts out, and the muffled drums marking the time of our regulation slow step.  Each foot seems to hang in the air before the drums bid us put it down.

In the very rear of the procession you may see the company commander and three subalterns.  They give no orders, and exact no attention.  To employ a colloquialism, this is not their funeral.

Just behind the gun-carriage stalks a solitary figure in civilian clothes—­the unmistakable “blacks” of an Elder of the Kirk.  At first sight, you have a feeling that some one has strayed into the procession who has no right there.  But no one has a better.  The sturdy old man behind the coffin is named Adam Carmichael, and he is here, having travelled south from Dumbarton by the night train, to attend the funeral of his only son.

II

Peter Carmichael was one of the first to enlist in the regiment.  There was another Carmichael in the same company, so Peter at roll-call was usually addressed by the sergeant as “Twenty-seven fufty-fower Carmichael,” 2754 being his regimental number.  The army does not encourage Christian names.  When his attestation paper was filled up, he gave his age as nineteen; his address, vaguely, as Renfrewshire; and his trade, not without an air, as a “holder-on.”  To the mystified Bobby Little he entered upon a lengthy explanation of the term in a language composed almost entirely of vowels, from which that officer gathered, dimly, that holding-on had something to do with shipbuilding.