ABSTRACT
A long passenger train bound for London panted laboriously southwards over the Great Northern Railway. It conveyed the battalion of Northshire volunteers to swell the ranks of the great army mustering in the southern counties. The pale sickly light of early dawn glimmered through the steamy windows and lighted up the pale sleep-suffused faces of the twelve volunteers who lay huddled together in each compartment. They all slept uneasily, sighing now and then as they slumbered, leaning crushed together, falling over one another, or lying back against the cushions to get into a more comfortable position. Some still held their pipes between their teeth, others clenched them in their fists, possessions too precious to be lightly parted with. Tobacco ash was scattered everywhere together with fragments of paper, crumbs of biscuit, and cigarette ends.
