Chapter 1. On The March
_ CHAPTER ONE. ON THE MARCH
Trrt--trrt--trrt. Just that little sound, as the sticks flirted with the drumheads to keep the men in step； for Her Majesty‘s 404th Fusiliers were marching "easy." So it was called； and it meant with the men smoking, and carrying their rifles as they pleased--shouldered, at the trail, slung muzzle up or muzzle down. But, all the same, it was a miserable fiction to call it marching easy, for it was impossible to make that march anything but hard. Why? Because of the road.
No； that is a fiction, too. It is absurd to call that stony shelf of rock, encumbered with stones of all sizes, full of cracks and holes, a road. It was almost in its natural state, with a smooth place here and there where it had been polished in bygone ages by avalanches of ice or stones.
But the sun shone brightly； the scenery was glorious, and grew in places awe-inspiring, as the regiment wound up and up the pass, and glimpses of snow-capped moun

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