Then he drew nearer, and the set, still face of the other filled him with a sudden sense of dismay.  There was a new look in it, a kind of dogged hopelessness.  It entirely lacked that suggestion of austere sweetness which had made it so difficult to reconcile his smirched reputation with the man himself.

“What is it, Garth?” Instinctively Miles slipped into the more familiar appellation.

Trent looked at him blankly.  It seemed as though he had not heard the question, or, at any rate, had not taken in its meaning.

“What did you say?” he muttered, his brows contracting painfully.

Miles slung the various packages with which he was burdened on to the ground, and leaned up leisurely against the gatepost.  It was characteristic of him that, although the day was never long enough for the work he crowded into it, he could always find time to give a helping hand to a pal with his back against the wall.

“Out with it, man!” he said.  “What’s up?”

Slowly recognition came back in the other’s eyes.

“What I might have anticipated,” he answered, at last, in a curious flat voice, devoid of expression.  “I’ve sunk a degree or two lower in Sara’s estimation since the war broke out.”

Miles regarded him quietly for a moment, a queer, half-humorous glint in his eyes.

“I suppose she doesn’t know you’ve half-beggared yourself, helping on the financial side?”

“A man could hardly do less, could he?” he returned awkwardly.  “But if she did know—­which she doesn’t—­it would make no earthly difference.”

“Then—­it’s because you’re not soldiering?”

“Exactly.  I’ve not volunteered.”

“Well”—­composedly—­“why don’t you?”

Trent laughed shortly.

“That’s my affair.”

“With your physique you could wangle the age limit,” pursued Miles imperturbably.

“I should have to ‘wangle’ a good deal more than that,”—­harshly.  “Have you forgotten that I was chucked from the Army?”

“There’s such a thing as enlisting under another name.”

“There is—­and then of running up against one of the old crowd and being recognized!  It isn’t so easy to lose your identity.  I’ve had my lesson on that.”

Miles looked away quickly.  The hard, implacable stare of the other man’s eyes, with the blazing defiance, hurt him.  It spoke too poignantly of a bitterness that had eaten into the heart.  But he had put his hand to the plough, and he refused to turn back.

“Wouldn’t it”—­he spoke with a sudden gentleness, the gentleness of the surgeon handling a torn limb—­“wouldn’t it help to straighten things out with Sara?”

“If it did, it would only make matters worse.  No.  Take it from me, Herrick, that soldiering is the one thing of all others I can’t do.”

He turned away as though to signify that the discussion was at an end.

“I don’t see it,” persisted Miles.  “On the contrary, it’s the one thing that might make her believe in you.  In spite of that Indian Frontier business.”