In the village of Frélus life went on as before. The same men, though a different regiment, filled its streets and its houses; for by what signs could the inhabitants distinguish one horde of English infantrymen from another? Once a Highland battalion had been billeted on them, and for the first day or so they derived some excitement from the novelty of the costume; the historic Franco-Scottish tradition still lingered, and they welcomed the old allies of France with especial kindliness; but they found that the habits and customs of the men in kilts were identical, in their French eyes, with those of the men in trousers. It is true the Scotch had bagpipes. The village turned out to listen to them in whole-eyed and whole-eared wonder. And the memory of the skirling music remained indelible. Otherwise there was little difference. And when a Midland regiment succeeded a South Coast regiment, where was the difference at all? They might be the same men.

Jeanne, standing by the kitchen door, watching the familiar scene in the courtyard, could scarcely believe there had been a change. Now and again she caught herself wondering why she could not pick out any one of her Three Musketeers. There were two or three soldiers, as usual, helping Toinette with her crocks at the well. There she was, herself, moving among them, as courteously treated as though she were a princess. Perhaps these men, whom she heard had come from manufacturing centres, were a trifle rougher in their manners than her late guests; but the intention of civility and rude chivalry was no less sincere. They came and asked for odds and ends very politely. To all intents and purposes they were the same set of men. Why was not Doggie among them? It seemed very strange.

After a while she made some sort of an acquaintance with a sergeant who had a few words of French and appeared anxious to improve his knowledge of the language. He explained that he had been a teacher in what corresponded to the French Ecoles Normales. He came from Birmingham, which he gave her to understand was a glorified Lille. She found him very earnest, very self-centred in his worship of efficiency. As he had striven for his class of boys, so now was he striving for his platoon of men. In a dogmatic way he expounded to her ideals severely practical. In their few casual conversations he interested her. The English, from the first terrible day of their association with her, had commanded her deep admiration. But until lately – in the most recent past – her sex, her national aloofness and her ignorance of English, had restrained her from familiar talk with the British Army. But now she keenly desired to understand this strange, imperturbable, kindly race. She put many questions to the sergeant – always at the kitchen door, in full view of the courtyard, for she never thought of admitting him into the house – and his answers, even when he managed to make himself intelligible, puzzled her exceedingly. One of his remarks led her to ask for what he was fighting, beyond his apparently fixed idea of the efficiency of the men under his control. What was the spiritual idea at the back of him?

“The democratization of the world and the universal brotherhood of mankind.”

“When the British Lion shall lie down with the German Lamb?”

He flashed a suspicious glance. Strenuous schoolmasters in primary schools have little time for the cultivation of a sense of humour.

“Something of the sort must be the ultimate result of the war.”

“But in the meantime you have got to change the German wolf into the petit mouton. How are you going to do it?”

“By British efficiency. By proving to him that we are superior to him in every way. We’ll teach him that it doesn’t pay to be a wolf.”

“And do you think he will like being transformed into a lamb, while you remain a lion?”

“I don’t suppose so, but we’ll give him his chance to try to become a lion too.”

Jeanne shook her head. “No, monsieur, wolf he is and wolf he will remain. A wolf with venomous teeth. The civilized world must see that the teeth are always drawn.”

“I’m speaking of fifty years hence,” said the sergeant.

“And I of three hundred years hence.”

“You’re mistaken, mademoiselle.”

Jeanne shook her head. “No. I’m not mistaken. Tell me. Why do you want to become brother to the Boche?”

“I’m not going to be his brother till the war’s over,” said the sergeant stolidly. “At present I am devoting all my faculties to killing as many of him as I can.”

She smiled. “Sufficient for the day is the good thereof. Go on killing them, monsieur. The more you kill the fewer there will be for your children and your grandchildren to lie down with.”

She left him and tried to puzzle out his philosophy. For the ordinary French philosophy of the war is very simple. They have no high-falutin, altruistic ideas of improving the Boche. They don’t care a tinker’s curse what happens to the unholy brood beyond the Rhine, so long as they are beaten, humiliated, subjected: so long as there is no chance of their ever deflowering again with their brutality the sacred soil of France. The French mind cannot conceive the idea of this beautiful brotherhood; but, on the contrary, rejects it as something loathsome, something bordering on spiritual defilement…

No; Jeanne could not accept the theory that we were waging war for the ultimate chastening and beatification of Germany. She preferred Doggie’s reason for fighting. For his soul. There was something which she could grip. And having gripped it, it was something around which her imagination could weave a web of noble fancy. After all, when she came to think of it, every one of the Allies must be fighting for his soul. For his soul’s sake had not her father died? Although she knew no word of German, it was obvious that the Uhlan officer had murdered him because he had refused to betray his country. And her uncle. To fight for his soul, had he not gone out with his heroic but futile sporting gun? And this pragmatical sergeant? What else had led him from his schoolroom to the battlefield? Why couldn’t he be honest about it, like Doggie?

She missed Doggie. He ought to be there, as she had often seen him unobserved, talking with his friends or going about his military duties, or playing the flageolet with the magical touch of the musician. She knew far more of Doggie than he was aware of … And at night she prayed for the little English soldier who was facing Death.

She had much time to think of him during the hours when she sat by the bedside of Aunt Morin, who talked incessantly of François-Marie who was killed on the Argonne, and Gaspard who, as a territorial, was no doubt defending Madagascar from invasion. And it was pleasant to think of him, because he was a new distraction from tragical memories. He seemed to lay the ghosts … He was different from all the Englishmen she had met. The young officers who had helped her in her flight, had very much the same charm of breeding, very much the same intonation of voice; instinctively she knew him to be of the same social caste; but they, and the officers whom she saw about the street and in the courtyard, when duty called them there, had the military air of command. And this her little English soldier had not. Of course, he was only a private, and privates are trained to obedience. She knew that perfectly well. But why was he not commanding instead of obeying? There was a reason for it. She had seen it in his eyes. She wished she had made him talk more about himself. Perhaps she had been unsympathetic and selfish. He assumed, she reflected, a certain crânerie with his fellows – and crânerie is “swagger” bereft of vulgarity – we have no word to connote its conception in a French mind – and she admired it; but her swift intuition pierced the assumption. She divined a world of hesitancies behind the Musketeer swing of the shoulders. He was so gentle, so sensitive, so quick to understand. And yet so proud. And yet again so unconfessedly dependent. Her woman’s protective instinct responded to a mute appeal.

“But, Ma’amselle Jeanne, you are wet through, you are perished with cold. What folly have you been committing?” Toinette scolded, when she returned after wishing Doggie the last “bonne chance.”

“The folly of putting my Frenchwoman’s heart (mon cœur de Française) into the hands of a brave little soldier to fight with him in the trenches.”

“Mon Dieu, ma’amselle, you had better go straight to bed, and I will bring you a bon tilleul, which will calm your nerves and produce a good perspiration.”

So Toinette put Jeanne to bed and administered the infallible infusion of lime leaves, and Jeanne was never the worse for her adventure. But the next day she wondered a little why she had undertaken it. She had a vague idea that it paid a little debt of sympathy.

An evening or two afterwards Jeanne was sewing in the kitchen when Toinette, sitting in the arm-chair by the extinct fire, fished out of her pocket the little olive-wood box with the pansies and forget-me-nots on the lid, and took a long pinch of snuff. She did it with somewhat of an air which caused Jeanne to smile.

“Dites donc, Toinette, you are insupportable with your snuff-box. One would say a marquise of the old school.”

“Ah, Ma’amselle Jeanne,” said the old woman, “you must not laugh at me. I was just thinking that, if anything happened to the petit monsieur, I couldn’t have the heart to go on putting his snuff up my old nose.”

“Nothing will happen to him,” said Jeanne.

The old woman sighed and re-engulfed the snuff-box. “Who knows? From one minute to another who knows whether the little ones who are dear to us are alive or dead?”

“And this petit monsieur is dear to you, Toinette?” Jeanne asked, in her even voice, without looking up from her sewing.

“Since he resembles my petiot.”

“He will come back,” said Jeanne.

“I hope so,” said the old woman mournfully.

In spite of manifold duties, Jeanne found the days curiously long. She slept badly. The tramp of the sentry below her window over the archway brought her no sense of comfort, as it had done for months before the coming of Doggie. All the less did it produce the queer little thrill of happiness which was hers when, looking down through the shutter slats she had identified in the darkness, on a change of guard, the little English soldier to whom she had spoken so intimately. And when he had challenged the rounds, she had recognized his voice… If she had obeyed an imbecile and unmaidenly impulse, she would have drawn open the shutter and revealed herself. But apart from maidenly shrinkings, familiarity with war had made her realize the sacred duties of a sentry, and she had remained in discreet seclusion, awake until his spell was over. But now the rhythmical beat of the heavy boots kept her from sleeping and would have irritated her nerves intolerably had not her sound common sense told her that the stout fellow who wore them was protecting her from the Hun, together with a million or so of his fellow-countrymen.

She found herself counting the days to Doggie’s return.

“At last, it is to-morrow!” she said to Toinette.

“What is it to-morrow?” asked the old woman.

“The return of our regiment,” replied Jeanne.

“That is good. We have a regiment now,” said Toinette ironically.

The Midland company marched away – as so many had marched away before; but Jeanne did not go to the little embankment at the turn of the road to wish anyone good luck. She stood at the house door, as she had always done, to watch them pass in the darkness; for there is always something in the sight of men going into battle which gives you a lump in the throat. For Jeanne it had almost grown into a religious practice.

The sergeant had told her that the new-comers would arrive at dawn. She slept a little; awoke with a start as day began to break; dressed swiftly, and went downstairs to wait. And then her ear caught the rumble and the tramp of the approaching battalion. Presently transport rolled by, and squads of men, haggard in the grey light, bending double under their packs, staggered along to their billets. And then came a rusty crew, among whom she recognized McPhail’s tall gaunt figure. She stood by the gateway, bareheaded, in her black dress and blue apron, defying the sharp morning air, and watched them pass through. She saw Mo Shendish, his eyes on the heels of the man in front. She recognized nearly all. But the man she looked for was not there.

He could not have passed without her seeing him; but as soon as the gateway was clear, she ran into the courtyard and fled across it to cut off the men. There was no Doggie. Blank disappointment was succeeded by sudden terror.

Phineas saw her coming. He stumbled up to her, dropped his pack at her feet, and spread out both his hands. She lost sight of the horde of weary clay-covered men around her. She cried:

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“He is dead?”

“No one knows.”

“But you must know, you!” cried Jeanne, with a new fear in her eyes which Phineas could not bear to meet. “You promised to bring him back.”

“It was not my fault,” said Phineas. “He was out last night – no, the night before, this is morning – repairing barbed wire. I was not with him.”

“Mais, mon Dieu, why not?”

“Because the duties of soldiers are arranged for them by their officers, mademoiselle.”

“It is true. Pardon. But continue.”

“A party went out to repair wire. It was quite dark. Suddenly a German rifle-shot gave the alarm. The enemy threw up star-shells and the front trenches on each side opened fire. The wiring party, of course, lay flat on the ground. One of them was wounded. When it was all over – it didn’t last long – our men got back, bringing the wounded man.”

“He is severely wounded? Speak,” cried Jeanne.

“The wounded man was not Doggie. Doggie went out with the party, but he did not come back. That’s why I said no one knows where he is.”

She stiffened. “He is lying out there. He is dead.”

“Shendish and I and Corporal Wilson over there, who was with the party, got permission to go out and search. We searched all round where the repair had been going on. But we could not find him.”

“Merci! I ought not to have reproached you,” she said steadily. “C’est un grand malheur.”

“You are right. Life for me is no longer of much value.”

She looked at him in her penetrating way.

“I believe you,” she said. “For the moment, au revoir. You must be worn out with fatigue.”

She left him and walked through the straggling men, who made respectful way for her. All knew of her friendship with Doggie Trevor and all realized the nature of this interview. They liked Doggie because he was good-natured and plucky, and never complained and would play the whistle on march as long as breath enough remained in his body. As his uncle, the Dean, had said, breed told. In a curious, half-grudging way they recognized the fact. They laughed at his singular inefficiency in the multitudinous arts of the handy-man, proficiency in which is expected from the modern private, but they knew that he would go on till he dropped. And knowing that, they saved him from many a reprimand which his absurd efforts in the arts aforesaid would have brought upon him. And now that Doggie was gone, they deplored his loss. But so many had gone. So many had been deplored. Human nature is only capable of a certain amount of deploring while retaining its sanity. The men let the pale French girl, who was Doggie Trevor’s friend, pass by in respectful silence – and that, for them, was their final tribute to Doggie Trevor.

Jeanne passed into the kitchen. Toinette drew a sharp breath at the sight of her face.

“Quoi? Il n’est pas là?”

“No,” said Jeanne. “He is wounded.” It was impossible to explain to Toinette.

“Badly?”

“They don’t know.”

“Oh, là, là!” sighed Toinette. “That always happens. That is what I told you.”

“We have no time to think of such things,” said Jeanne.

The regimental cooks came up for the hot water, and soon the hungry, weary, nerve-racked men were served with the morning meal. And Jeanne stood in the courtyard in front of the kitchen door and helped with the filling of the tea-kettles, as though no little English soldier called “Dog-gie” had ever existed in the regiment.

The first pale shaft of sunlight fell upon the kitchen side of the courtyard, and in it Jeanne stood illuminated. It touched the shades of gold in her dark brown hair, and lit up her pale face and great unsmiling eyes. But her lips smiled valiantly.

“What do yer think, Mac,” said Mo Shendish, squatting on the flagstones, “do you think she was really sweet on him?”

“Man,” replied Phineas, similarly engaged, “all I know is that she has added him to her collection of ghosts. It’s not an over-braw company for a lassie to live with.”

And then, soon afterwards, the trench-broken men stumbled into the barn to sleep, and all was quiet again, and Jeanne went about her daily tasks with the familiar hand of death once more closing icily around her heart.

CHAPTER XVI

The sick-room was very hot, and Aunt Morin very querulous. Jeanne opened a window, but Aunt Morin complained of currents of air. Did Jeanne want to kill her? So Jeanne closed the window. The internal malady from which Aunt Morin suffered, and from which it was unlikely that she would recover, caused her considerable pain from time to time; and on these occasions she grew fractious and hard to bear with. The retired septuagenarian village doctor who had taken the modest practice of his son, now far away with the Army, advised an operation. But Aunt Morin, with her peasant’s prejudice, declined flatly. She knew what happened in those hospitals where they cut people up just for the pleasure of looking at their insides. She was not going to let a lot of butchers amuse themselves with her old carcass. Oh non! When it pleased the bon Dieu to take her, she was ready: the bon Dieu required no assistance from ces messieurs. And even if she had consented, how to take her to Paris, and once there, how to get the operation performed, with all the hospitals full and all the surgeons at the Front? The old doctor shrugged his shoulders and kept life in her as best he might.

To-day, in the close room, she told a long story of the doctor’s neglect. The medicine he gave her was water and nothing else – water with nothing in it. And to ask people to pay for that! She would not pay. What would Jeanne advise?

”Oui, ma tante,” said Jeanne.

“Oui, ma tante? But you are not listening to what I say. At the least one can be polite.”

“I am listening, ma tante.”

“You should be grateful to those who lodge and nourish you.”

“I am grateful, ma tante,” said Jeanne patiently.

Aunt Morin complained of being robbed on all sides. The doctor, Toinette, Jeanne, the English soldiers – the last the worst of all. Besides not paying sufficiently for what they had, they were so wasteful in the things they took for nothing. If they begged for a few faggots to make a fire, they walked away with the whole woodstack. She knew them. But all soldiers were the same. They thought that in time of war civilians had no rights. One of these days she would get up and come downstairs and see for herself the robbery that was going on.

The windows were tightly sealed. The sunlight hurting Aunt Morin’s eyes, the outside shutters were half closed. The room felt like a stuffy, overheated, overcrowded sepulchre. An enormous oak press, part of her Breton dowry, took up most of the side of one wall. This, and a great handsome chest, a couple of tables, a stiff arm-chair, were all too big for the moderately sized apartment. Coloured prints of sacred subjects, tilted at violent angles, seemed eager to occupy as much air-space as possible. And in the middle of the floor sprawled the vast oaken bed, with its heavy green brocade curtains falling tentwise from a great tarnished gilt crown in the ceiling.

Jeanne said nothing. What was the good? She shifted the invalid’s hot pillow and gave her a drink of tisane, moving about the over-furnished, airless room in her calm and efficient way. Her face showed no sign of trouble, but an iron band clamped her forehead above her burning eyes. She could perform her nurse’s duties, but it was beyond her power to concentrate her mind on the sick woman’s unending litany of grievances. Far away beyond that darkened room, beyond that fretful voice, she saw vividly a hot waste, hideous with holes and rusted wire and shapes of horror; and in the middle of it lay huddled up a little khaki-clad figure with the sun blazing fiercely in his unblinking eyes. And his very body was beyond the reach of man, even of the most lion-hearted.

“Mais qu’as-tu, ma fille?” asked Aunt Morin. “You do not speak. When people are ill they need to be amused.”

“I am sorry, ma tante, but I am not feeling very well to-day. It will pass.”

“I hope so. Young people have no business not to feel well. Otherwise what is the good of youth?”

“It is true,” Jeanne assented.

But what, she thought, was indeed the good of youth, in these terrible days of war? Her own was but a panorama of death… And now one more figure, this time one of youth too, had joined it.

Toinette came in.

“Ma’amselle Jeanne, there are two English officers downstairs who wish to speak to you.”

“What do they want?” Jeanne asked wearily.

“They do not say. They just ask for Ma’amselle Bossière.”

“They never leave one in peace, ces gens-là,” grumbled Aunt Morin. “If they want more concessions in price, do not let them frighten you. Go to Monsieur le Maire to have it arranged with justice. These people would eat the skin off your back. Remember, Jeanne.”

”Bien, ma tante,” said Jeanne.

She went downstairs, conscious of gripping herself in order to discuss with the officers whatever business of billeting was in hand. For she had dealt with all such matters since her arrival in Frélus. She reached the front door and saw a dusty car with a military chauffeur at the wheel and two officers, standing on the pavement at the foot of the steps. One she recognized as the commander of the company to which her billeted men belonged. The other was a stranger, a lieutenant, with a different badge on his cap. They were talking and laughing together, like old friends newly met, which by one of the myriad coincidences of the war was really the case. On the appearance of Jeanne they drew themselves up and saluted politely.

“Mademoiselle Bossière?”

“Oui, monsieur.” Then, “Will you enter, messieurs?”

They entered the vestibule where the great cask gleamed in its polished mahogany and brass. She bade them be seated.

“Mademoiselle, Captain Willoughby tells me that you had billeted here last week a soldier by the name of Trevor,” said the stranger, in excellent French, taking out notebook and pencil.

Jeanne’s lips grew white. She had not suspected their errand.

“Oui, monsieur.”

“Did you have much talk with him?”

“Much, monsieur.”

“Pardon my indiscretion, mademoiselle – it is military service, and I am an Intelligence officer – but did you tell him about your private affairs?”

“Very intimately,” said Jeanne.

The Intelligence officer made a note or two and smiled pleasantly – but Jeanne could have struck him for daring to smile. “You had every reason for thinking him a man of honour?”

“What’s the good of asking her that, Smithers?” Captain Willoughby interrupted in English. “Haven’t I given you my word? The man’s a mysterious little devil, but any fool can see that he’s a gentleman.”

“What do you say?” Jeanne asked tensely.

“Je parle français très peu,” replied Captain Willoughby with an air of regret.

Smithers explained. “Monsieur le Capitaine says that he guarantees the honesty of the soldier, Trevor.”

Jeanne flashed, rigid. “Who could doubt it, monsieur? He was a gentleman, a fils de famille, of the English aristocracy.”

“Excuse me for a moment,” said Smithers.

He went out. Jeanne, uncomprehending, sat silent. Captain Willoughby, cursing an idiot education, composed in his head a polite French sentence concerning the weather, but before he had finished Smithers reappeared with a strange twisted packet in his hand. He held it out to Jeanne.

“Mademoiselle, do you recognize this?”

She looked at it dully for a moment; then suddenly sprang to her feet and clenched her hands and stared open-mouthed. She nodded. She could not speak. Her brain swam. They had come to her about Doggie, who was dead, and they showed her Père Grigou’s packet. What was the connection between the two?

Willoughby rose impulsively. “For God’s sake, Smithers, let her down easy. She’ll be fainting all over the place in a minute.”

“If this is your property, mademoiselle,” said Smithers, laying the packet on the chenille-covered table, “you have to thank your friend Trevor for restoring it to you.”

She put up both hands to her reeling head.

“But he is dead, monsieur!”

“Not a bit of it. He’s just as much alive as you or I.”

Jeanne swayed, tried to laugh, threw herself half on a chair, half over the great cask, and broke down in a passion of tears.

The two men looked at each other uncomfortably.

“For exquisite tact,” said Willoughby, “commend me to an Intelligence officer.”

“But how the deuce was I to know?” Smithers muttered with an injured air. “My instructions were to find out the truth of a cock-and-bull story – for that’s what it seemed to come to. And a girl in billets – well – how was I to know what she was like?”

“Anyhow, here we’ve got hysterics,” said Willoughby.

“But who told her the fellow was dead?”

“Why, his pals. I thought so myself. When a man’s missing where’s one to suppose him to be – having supper at the Savoy?”

“Well, I give women up,” said Smithers. “I thought she’d be glad.”

“I believe you’re a married man?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, I ain’t,” said Willoughby, and in a couple of strides he stood close to Jeanne. He laid a gentle hand on her heaving shoulders.

“Pas tué! Soolmong blessé,” he shouted.

She sprang, as it were, to attention, like a frightened recruit.

“He is wounded?”

“Not very seriously, mademoiselle.” Smithers, casting an indignant glance at his superior officer’s complacent smile, reassumed mastery of the situation. “A Boche sniper got him in the leg. It will put him out of service for a month or two. But there is no danger.”

“Grâce à Dieu!” said Jeanne.

She leaned for a while against the cask, her hands behind her, looking away from the two men. And the two young men stood, somewhat embarrassed, looking away from her and from each other. At last she said, with an obvious striving for the even note in her voice:

“I ask your pardon, messieurs, but sometimes sudden happiness is more overwhelming than misfortune. I am now quite at your service.”

“My God! she’s a wonder,” murmured Willoughby, who was fair, unmarried, and impressionable. “Go on with your dirty work.”

Smithers, conscious of linguistic superiority – in civil life he had been concerned with the wine trade in Bordeaux – proceeded to carry out his instructions. He turned over a leaf in his notebook and poised a ready pencil.

“I must ask you, mademoiselle, some formal questions.”

“Perfectly, monsieur,” said Jeanne.

“Where was this packet when last you saw it?”

She made her statement, calmly.

“Can you tell me its contents?”

“Not all, monsieur. I, as a young girl, was not in the full confidence of my parents. But I remember my uncle saying there were about twenty thousand francs in notes, some gold – I know not how much – some jewellery of my mother’s – oh, a big handful! – rings – one a hoop of emeralds and diamonds – a brooch with a black pearl belonging to my great-grandmother – ”

“It is enough, mademoiselle,” said Smithers, jotting down notes. “Anything else besides money and jewellery?”

“There were papers of my father, share certificates, bonds —que sais-je, moi?”

Smithers opened the packet, which had already been examined.

“You’re a witness, sir, to the identification of the property.”

“No,” said Willoughby, “I’m just a baby captain of infantry, and wonder why the brainy Intelligence department doesn’t hand the girl her belongings and decently clear out.”

“I’ve got to make my report, sir,” said Smithers stiffly.

So the schedule was produced and the notes were solemnly counted, twenty-one thousand five hundred francs, and the gold four hundred francs, and the jewels were identified, and the bonds, of which Jeanne knew nothing, were checked by a list in her father’s handwriting, and Jeanne signed a paper with Smithers’s fountain-pen, and Willoughby witnessed her signature, and thus she entered into possession of her heritage.

The officers were about to depart, but Jeanne detained them.

“Messieurs, you must pardon me, but I am quite bewildered. As far as I can understand, Monsieur Trevor rescued the packet from the well at my uncle’s farm of La Folette, and got wounded in doing so.”

“That is quite so,” said Smithers.

“But, monsieur, they tell me he was with a party in front of his trench mending wire. How did he reach the well of La Folette? I don’t comprehend at all.”

Smithers turned to Willoughby.

“Yes. How the dickens did he know the exact spot to go for?”

“We had taken over a new sector, and I was getting the topography right with a map. Trevor was near by doing nothing, and as he’s a man of education, I asked him to help me. There was the site of the farm marked by name, and the ruined well away over to the left in No Man’s Land. I remember the beggar calling out ‘La Folette!’ in a startled voice, and when I asked him what was the matter, he said ‘Nothing, sir!’”

Smithers translated, and continued: “You see, mademoiselle, this is what happened, as far as I am concerned. I belong to the Lancashire Fusiliers. Our battalion is in the trenches farther up the line than our friends. Well, just before dawn yesterday morning a man rolled over the parapet into our trench, and promptly fainted. He had been wounded in the leg, and was half dead from loss of blood. Under his tunic was this package. We identified him and his regiment, and fixed him up and took him to the dressing-station. But things looked very suspicious. Here was a man who didn’t belong to us with a little fortune in loot on his person. As soon as he was fit to be interrogated, the C.O. took him in hand. He told the C.O. about you and your story. He regarded the nearness of the well as something to do with Destiny, and resolved to get you back your property – if it was still there. The opportunity occurred when the wiring party was alarmed. He crept out to the ruins by the well, fished out the packet, and a sniper got him. He managed to get back to our lines, having lost his way a bit, and tumbled into our trench.”