The mind
wanders, in spite of all effort to check it, through a long series of
all the ghastly stories one has ever read. There is one in particular
of Conan Doyle's about a mummy that came to life and chased people on
lonely roads--but enough! However courageous one may be, it is
difficult not to speculate on the possible horrors which may spring
out on one from the darkness. That feeling that there is somebody--or
something--just behind one can only be experienced in all its force by
a sentry on an inky night at camp. And the thought that, of all the
hundreds there, he and two others are the only ones awake, puts a sort
of finishing touch to the unpleasantness of the situation.
Kennedy was not a particularly imaginative youth, but he looked
forward with no little eagerness to the time when he should be
relieved. It would be a relief in two senses of the word. His beat
included that side of the camp which faces the road to Aldershot.
Between camp and this road is a ditch and a wood. After he had been on
duty for an hour this wood began to suggest a variety of
possibilities, all grim. The ditch, too, was not without associations.
It was into this that Private Jones had been hurled on a certain
memorable occasion. Such a thing was not likely to happen again in the
same week, and, even if it did, Kennedy flattered himself that he
would have more to say in the matter than Private Jones had had; but
nevertheless he kept a careful eye in that direction whenever his beat
took him along the ditch.
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