I had most of my clothes on now and felt more courageous.

'It is all a plot to get him into disgrace and draft him off to the front.' Stumm did not storm as I expected, but smiled.
'That was always his destiny,' he said, 'ever since I saw him.

He was no use to us except as a man with a rifle.

Cannon-fodder, nothing else.

Do you imagine, you fool, that this great Empire in the thick of a world-war is going to trouble its head to lay snares for an ignorant _taakhaar_ ?' 'I wash my hands of him,' I said.