Page:Edgar Wallace--Tam o the Scoots.djvu/222

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

TAM O' THE SCOOTS

could only be continued by the relation of his own prowess, "and I'm glad you brought him down—it makes me shudder to see the balloons burning. Oh, and do you know they bombed Number One-Three-One last night?"

"Ye don't say!"

There was amazement in his look, but there was pain, too. The traditions of the air service had become his traditions. A breach of the unwritten code by the enemy was almost as painful a matter to him as though it was committed by one of his own comrades. For his spiritual growth had dated from the hour of his enlistment, and that period of life wherein youth absorbs its most vivid and most eradicable impressions, had coincided with the two years he had spent in his new environment.

He understood nothing of the army and its intimate life, of its fierce and wholesome code. He could only wonder at the courage and the endurance of those men on the ground who were cheerful in all circum-

204