Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A MATTER OF DISCIPLINE O'BYRNE, the Reverend Timothy, is our padre. We call him Tim behind his back because we like him and Padre to his face because some respect is due to his profession. Mackintosh is our medical officer. The Reverend Tim used to take a special delight in teasing Mackintosh. It may have been the natural antipathy, the cat and dog feeling, which exists between parsons and doctors. I do not know. But the padre never lost a chance of pulling the doctor's leg, and Mackintosh spent hours proving that the things which the padre says he saw could not possibly have happened. I should not like to call any padre a liar; but some of the Rev. Tim's stories were rather tall, and the doctor's scepticism always goaded him to fresh flights of imagination. The mess was a much livelier place after the Rev. Tim joined it. Before he attached himself to us we used to wonder why God made men like Mackintosh, and what use they are in the world. Now we know. Mackintosh exists to call out all that is best in our padre. One night—the battalion was back resting at the time—we had an Assistant Provost Marshal as a guest. The conversation turned on the subject of deserters, and our A.P.M. told us some curious stories about the attempts made by these poor devils to escape the net of the military organization. " The fact is," said the A.P.M., " that a deserter hasn't a dog's chance, not here in France anyway. We are bound to get him every time." " Not every time," said the padre. " I know one who has been at large for months and you'll never lay hands on him." The A.P.M., who did not of course know our padre, sat up and frowned. " I don't think it's his fault that he's a deserter," said the padre. " He was forced into it. And anyway, even if I give you his name and ...