back of his neck and glanced round apprehensively.  “It was a chap called Innes—­Oh, an awfully decent sort—­people were in the Argentine.  He’d been calling out to me as we were running, and I was just answering.  When I felt this hot water on my neck and saw him running past me with no head—­ he’d got no head, and he went running past me.  I don’t know how far, but a long way. . . .  Blood, you know—­Yes—­well—­

“Oh, I hated Chelsea—­I loathed Chelsea—­Chelsea was purgatory to me.  I had a corporal called Wallace—­he was a fine chap—­oh, he was a fine chap—­six foot two—­and about twenty-four years old.  He was my stand-back.  Oh, I hated Chelsea, and parades, and drills.  You know, when it’s drill, and you’re giving orders, you forget what order you’ve just given—­in front of the Palace there the crowd don’t notice—­but it’s AWFUL for you.  And you know you daren’t look round to see what the men are doing.  But Wallace was splendid.  He was just behind me, and I’d hear him, quite quiet you know, ‘It’s right wheel, sir.’  Always perfect, always perfect—­yes—­well. . . .

“You know you don’t get killed if you don’t think you will.  Now I never thought I should get killed.  And I never knew a man get killed if he hadn’t been thinking he would.  I said to Wallace I’d rather be out here, at the front, than at Chelsea.  I hated Chelsea—­I can’t tell you how much.  ‘Oh no, sir!’ he said.  ’I’d rather be at Chelsea than here.  I’d rather be at Chelsea.  There isn’t hell like this at Chelsea.’  We’d had orders that we were to go back to the real camp the next day.  ‘Never mind, Wallace,’ I said.  ’We shall be out of this hell-on-earth tomorrow.’  And he took my hand.  We weren’t much for showing feeling or anything in the guards.  But he took my hand.  And we climbed out to charge—­Poor fellow, he was killed—­” Herbertson dropped his head, and for some moments seemed to go unconscious, as if struck.  Then he lifted his face, and went on in the same animated chatty fashion:  “You see, he had a presentiment.  I’m sure he had a presentiment.  None of the men got killed unless they had a presentiment—­like that, you know. . . .”

Herbertson nodded keenly at Lilly, with his sharp, twinkling, yet obsessed eyes.  Lilly wondered why he made the presentiment responsible for the death—­which he obviously did—­and not vice versa.  Herbertson implied every time, that you’d never get killed if you could keep yourself from having a presentiment.  Perhaps there was something in it.  Perhaps the soul issues its own ticket of death, when it can stand no more.  Surely life controls life:  and not accident.