"Oh, but those boys couldn't help doing well," Mrs. Hunt said, looking almost as pleased as the two beaming faces before her. "They're so keen. I don't know if I should, but shall I read you what Douglas says about them?" They gathered eagerly together over the curt words of praise Major Hunt had written. "Quite ordinary boys, and not a bit brainy," he finished. "But I wish I had a regiment full of them!"

Out in Australia, two months later, a huge old woman and a lean Irishman talked over the letter Norah had at length managed to finish.

"And it's a Captin he is!" said Murty O'Toole, head stockman.

"A Captain!" Brownie echoed. "Don't it seem only yesterday he was tearing about in his first little trousis, and the little mistress watching him!"

"And riding his first pony. She put him over her head, and I med sure he was kilt. 'Howld her, will ye, Murty,' says he, stamping his little fut, and blood trickling down his face. 'Give me a leg up again,' he says, 'till we see who's boss!' And I put him up, and off he went down the paddock, digging his little heels into her. And he's a Captin! Little Masther Jim!"

"I don't know why you're surprised," said Brownie loftily. "The only wonder to me is he wasn't one six months ago!"



CHAPTER XIII

THE END OF A PERFECT DAY

"Are you ready, Norah?"

"Coming, Phil—half a minute!"

Hardress, in riding kit, looked into the kitchen, where Norah was carrying on a feverish consultation with Miss de Lisle.

"You'll be late," he said warningly. "Your father and Geoffrey have gone on."

"Will I truly?" said Norah distractedly. "Yes, Miss de Lisle, I'll write to the Stores about it to-night. Now, what about the fish?"

"Leave the fish to me," said Miss de Lisle, laughing. "If I can't manage to worry out a fish course without you, I don't deserve to have half my diplomas. Run away: the house won't go to pieces in a single hunting day."

"Bless you!" said Norah thankfully, dragging on her gloves and casting a wild glance about the kitchen for her hunting crop. "Oh, there it is. Good-bye. You won't forget that Major Arkwright is only allowed white meat?"

"Oh, run away—I won't forget anything."

"Well, he only came last night, so I thought you mightn't know," said the apologetic mistress of the house. "All right, Phil—I'm truly coming. Good-bye, Miss de Lisle!" The words floated back as she raced off to the front door, where the horses were fretting impatiently, held by the groom.

They jogged down the avenue—Hardress on one of the brown cobs, Norah on Brunette, the black pony—her favourite mount. It was a perfect hunting morning: mild and still, with almost a hint of spring warmth in the air. The leafless trees bore faint signs of swelling leaf-buds. Here and there, in the grass beside the drive crocus bells peeped out at them—purple, white and gold.

"We'll have daffodils soon, I do believe," Norah said. "Well, I love Australia, but there isn't anything in the world lovelier than your English spring!"

Ahead of them, as they turned into the road, they could see Mr. Linton, looking extraordinarily huge on Killaloe, beside Geoffrey's little figure on Brecon.

"This is a great day for Geoff," Hardress said.

"Yes—he has been just longing to go to a meet. Of course he has driven a good many times, but Mrs. Hunt has been a bit nervous about his riding. But he's perfectly safe—and it isn't as if Brecon ever got excited."

"No. Come along, Norah, there's a splendid stretch of grass here: let's canter!"

They had agreed upon a Christian-name footing some time before, when it seemed that Hardress was likely to be a permanent member of the household. She looked at him now, as they cantered along through the dew-wet grass at the side of the road. No one would have guessed at anything wrong with him: he was bronzed and clear-eyed, and sat as easily in the saddle as though he had never been injured.

"Sometimes," said Norah suddenly, "I find myself wondering which of your legs is the shop one!" She flushed. "I suppose I oughtn't to make personal remarks, but your leg does seem family property!"

"So it is," said Hardress, grinning. "Anyhow, you couldn't make a nicer personal remark than that one. So I forgive you. But it's all thanks to you people."

"We couldn't have done anything if you hadn't been determined to get on," Norah answered. "As soon as you made up your mind to that—well, you got on."

"I don't know how you stood me so long," he muttered. Then they caught up to the riders ahead, and were received by Geoffrey with a joyful shout.

"You were nearly late, Norah," said Mr. Linton.

"I dragged her from the kitchen, sir," Hardress said. "She and Miss de Lisle were poring over food—if we get no dinner to-night it will be our fault."

"If you had the responsibility of feeding fourteen hungry people you wouldn't make a joke of it," said Norah. "It's very solemn, especially when the fishmonger fails you hopelessly."

"There's always tinned salmon," suggested her father.

"Tinned salmon, indeed!" Norah's voice was scornful. "We haven't come yet to giving the Tired People dinner out of a tin. However, it's all right: Miss de Lisle will work some sort of a miracle. I'm not going to think of housekeeping for a whole day!"

The meet was four miles away, near a marshy hollow thickly covered with osiers and willows. A wood fringed the marsh, and covered a hill which rose from a little stream beyond it. Here and there was a glimpse of the yellow flame of gorse. There were rolling fields all round, many of them ploughed: it had not yet been made compulsory for every landowner to till a portion of his holding, but English farmers were beginning to awake to the fact that while the German submarine flourished it would be both prudent and profitable to grow as much food as possible, and the plough had been busy. The gate into the field overlooking the marsh stood open; a few riders were converging towards it from different points. The old days of crowded meets and big fields of riders were gone. Only a few plucky people struggled to keep the hounds going, and to find work for the hunters that had escaped the first requisition of horses for France.

The hounds came into view as Mr. Linton's party arrived. The "Master" came first, on a big, workmanlike grey; a tall woman, with a weatherbeaten face surmounted by a bowler hat. The hounds trotted meekly after her, one or another pausing now and then to drink at a wayside puddle before being rebuked for bad manners by a watchful whip. Mrs. Ainslie liked the Lintons; she greeted them pleasantly.

"Nice morning," she said. "Congratulations: I hear the boy is a Captain."

"We can't quite realize it," Norah said, laughing. "You see, we hardly knew he had grown up!"

"Well, he grew to a good size," said Mrs. Ainslie, with a smile. "Hullo, Geoff. Are you going to follow to-day?"

"They won't let me," said Geoffrey dolefully. "I know Brecon and I could, but Mother says we're too small."

"Too bad!" said Mrs. Ainslie. "Never mind; you'll be big pretty soon."

A tall old man in knickerbockers greeted her: Squire Brand, who owned a famous property a few miles away, and who had the reputation of never missing a meet, although he did not ride. He knew every inch of the country; it was said that he could boast, at the end of a season, that he had, on the whole, seen more of the runs than any one else except the Master. He was a tireless runner, with an extraordinarily long stride, which carried him over fields and ditches and gave him the advantage of many a short cut impossible to most people. He knew every hound by name; some said he knew every fox in the country; and he certainly had an amazing knowledge of the direction a fox was likely to take. Horses, on the other hand, bored him hopelessly; he consented to drive them, in the days when motors were not, but merely as a means of getting from place to place. A splendid car, with a chauffeur much smarter than his master, had just dropped him: a grant figure in weatherbeaten Harris tweeds, grasping a heavy stick.

"We should get a good run to-day," he said.

"Yes—with luck," Mrs. Ainslie answered.

"Any news from the Colonel?"

"Nothing in particular—plenty of hard fighting. But he never writes much of that. He's much more interested in a run he had with a queer scratch pack near their billets. I can't quite gather how it was organized, but it comprised two beagles and a greyhound and a fox-terrier and a pug. He said they had a very sporting time!"

Squire Brand chuckled.

"I don't doubt it," he said. "Did he say what they hunted?"

"Anything they could get, apparently. They began with a hare, and then got on to a rabbit, in some mysterious fashion. They finished up with a brisk run in the outskirts of a village, and got a kill—it turned out this time to be a cat!" Mrs. Ainslie's rather grim features relaxed into a smile. "If any one had told Val two years ago that he would be enthusiastic over a day like that!"

A few other riders had come up: two or three officers from a neighbouring town; a couple of old men, and a sprinkling of girls. Philip Hardress was the only young man in plain clothes, and strangers who did not suspect anything amiss with his leg looked at him curiously.

"Look at that dear old thing!" he whispered to Norah, indicating a prim maiden lady who had arrived on foot. "I know she's aching for a chance to ask me why I'm not in khaki!" He grinned delightedly. "She's rather like the old lady who met me in the train the other day, and after looking at me sadly for a few minutes said, 'My dear young man, do you not know that your King and Country want you?'"

"Phil! What did you say?"

"I said, 'Well, they've got one of my legs, and they don't seem to have any use for the remnant!' I don't think she believed me, so I invited her to prod it!" He chuckled at his grim joke. Three months ago he had shrunk from any mention of his injury as from the lash of a whip.

Mrs. Ainslie never wasted time. Two minutes' grace for any laggards—which gave time for the arrival of a stout lady on a weight-carrying cob—and then she moved on, and in a moment the hounds were among the osiers, hidden except that now and then a waving stern caught the eye. Occasionally there was a brief whimper, and once a young hound gave tongue too soon, and was, presumably, rebuked by his mother, and relapsed into hunting in shamed silence.

The osiers proved blank: they drew out, and went up the hill into the covert, while the field moved along to be as close as possible, and the followers on foot dodged about feverishly, hoping for luck that would make a fox break their way. Too often the weary lot of the foot contingent is to see nothing whatever after the hounds once enter covert, since the fox is apt to leave it as unobtrusively as possible at the far side, and to take as short a line as he can across country to another refuse. To follow the hounds on foot needs a stout heart and patience surpassing that of Job.

But those on horses know little of the blighting experiences of the foot-plodders: and when Norah went a-hunting everything ceased to exist for her except the white-and-black-and-tan hounds and the green fields, and Brunette under her, as eager as she for the first long-drawn-out note from the pack. They moved restlessly back and forth along the hillside, the black pony dancing with impatience at the faintest whimper from an unseen hound. Near them Killaloe set an example of steadiness—but with watchful eyes and pricked ears.

Squire Brand came up to them.

"I'd advise you to get up near the far end of the covert," he said. "It's almost a certainty that he'll break away there and make a bee-line across to Harley Wood. I hope he will, for there's less plough there than in the other direction." He hurried off, and Norah permitted Brunette to caper after him. A young officer on a big bay followed their example.

"Come along," he said to a companion. "It's a safe thing to follow old Brand's lead if you want to get away well."

Where the covert ended the hill sloped gently to undulating fields, divided by fairly stiff hedges with deep ditches, and occasionally by post-and-rail fences, more like the jumps that Norah knew in Australia. The going was good and sound, and there was no wire—that terror of the hunter. Norah had always hated wire, either plain or barbed. She held that it found its true level in being used against Germans.

Somewhere in a tangle of bracken an old hound spoke sharply. A little thrill ran through her. She saw her father put his pipe in his pocket and pull his hat more firmly down on his forehead, while she held back Brunette, who was dancing wildly. Then came another note, and another, and a long-drawn burst of music from the hounds; and suddenly Norah saw a stealthy russet form, with brush sweeping the ground, that stole from the covert and slid down the slope, and after him, a leaping wave of brown and white and black as hounds came bounding from the wood and flung themselves upon the scent, with Mrs. Ainslie close behind. Some one shouted "Gone awa-a-y!" in a voice that went ringing in echoes round the hillside.

Brunette bucked airily over the low fence near the covert, and Killaloe took it almost in his stride. Then they were racing side by side down the long slope, with the green turf like wet velvet underfoot; and the next hedge seemed rushing to meet them. Over, landing lightly in the next field; before them only the "Master" and whip, and the racing hounds, with burning eyes for the little red speck ahead, trailing his brush.

"By Jove, Norah!" said David Linton, "we're in for a run!"

Norah nodded. Speech was beyond her; only all her being was singing with the utter joy of the ride. Beneath her Brunette was spurning the turf with dainty hooves; stretching out in her gallop, yet gathering herself cleverly at her fences, with alert, pricked ears—judging her distance, and landing with never a peck or stumble. The light weight on the pony's back was nothing to her; the delicate touch on her mouth was all she needed to steady her at the jumps.

Near Harley Wood the fox decided regretfully that safety lay elsewhere: the enemy, running silently and surely, were too hot on his track. He crept through a hedge, and slipped like a shadow down a ditch; and hounds, jumping out, were at fault for a moment. The slight check gave the rest of the field time to get up.

"That's a great pony!" Norah heard the young officer say. She patted Brunette's arching neck.

Then a quick cast of the hounds picked up the scent, and again they were off, but no longer with the fences to themselves; so that it was necessary to be watchful for the cheerful enthusiast who jumps on top of you, and the prudent sportsman who wobbles all over the field in his gallop, seeking for a gap. Killaloe drew away again: there was no hunter in the country side to touch him. After him went Brunette, with no notion of permitting her stable companion to lose her in a run like this.

A tall hedge faced them, with an awkward take-off from the bank of a ditch. Killaloe crashed through; Brunette came like a bird in his tracks, Norah's arm across her face to ward off the loose branches. She got through with a tear in her coat, landing on stiff plough through which Mrs. Ainslie's grey was struggling painfully. Brunette's light burden was all in her favour here—Norah was first to the gate on the far side, opening it just in time for the "Master," and thrilling with joy at that magnate's brief "Thank you!" as she passed through and galloped away. The plough had given the hounds a long lead. But ahead were only green fields, dotted by clumps of trees: racing ground, firm and springy. The air sang in their ears. The fences seemed as nothing; the good horses took them in racing style, landing with no shock, and galloping on, needing no touch of whip or spur.

The old dog-fox was tiring, as well he might, and yet, ahead, he knew, lay sanctuary, in an old quarry where the piled rocks hid a hole where he had lain before, with angry hounds snuffing helplessly around him. He braced his weary limbs for a last effort. The cruel eyes and lolling tongues were very close behind him; but his muscles were steel, and he knew how to save every short cut that gave him so much as a yard. He saw the quarry, just ahead, and snarled his triumph in his untamed heart.

Brunette's gallop was faltering a little, and Norah's heart sank. She had never had such a run: it was hard if she could not see it out, when they had led the field the whole way—and while yet Killaloe was going like a galloping-machine in front. Then she heard a shout from her father and saw him point ahead. "Water!" came to her. She saw the gleam of water, fringed by reeds: saw Killaloe rise like a deer at it, taking off well on the near side, and landing with many feet to spare.

"Oh—we can do that," Norah thought. "Brunette likes water."

She touched the pony with her heel for the first time, and spoke to her. Brunette responded instantly, gathering herself for the jump. Again Norah heard a shout, and was conscious of the feeling of vague irritation that we all know when some one is trying to tell us something we cannot possibly hear. She took the pony at the jump about twenty yards from the place where Killaloe had flown it. Nearer and nearer. The water gleamed before her, very close: she felt the pony steady herself for the leap. Then the bank gave way under her heels: there was a moment's struggle and a stupendous splash.

Norah's first thought was that the water was extremely cold; then, that the weight on her left leg was quite uncomfortable. Brunette half-crouched, half-lay, in the stream, too bewildered to move; then she sank a little more to one side and Norah had to grip her mane to keep herself from going under the surface. It seemed an unpleasantly long time before she saw her father's face.

"Norah—are you hurt?"

"No, I'm not hurt," she said. "But I can't get my leg out—and Brunette seems to think she wants to stay here. I suppose she finds the mud nice and soft." She tried to smile at his anxious face, but found it not altogether easy.

"We'll get you out," said David Linton. He tugged at the pony's bridle; and Mrs. Ainslie, arriving presently, came to his assistance, while some of the other riders, coming up behind, encouraged Brunette with shouts and hunting-crops. Thus urged, Brunette decided that some further effort was necessary, and made one, with a mighty flounder, while Norah rolled off into the water. Half a dozen hands helped her at the bank.

"You're sure you're not hurt?" her father asked anxiously. "I was horribly afraid she'd roll on your leg when she moved."

"I'm quite all right—only disgustingly wet," said Norah. "Oh, and I missed the finish—did you ever know such bad luck?"

"Well, you only missed the last fifty yards," said Mrs. Ainslie, pointing to the quarry, from which the whips were dislodging the aggrieved hounds. "We finished there; and that old fox is good for another day yet. I'd give you the brush, if he hadn't decided to keep it himself."

"Oh!" said Norah, blushing, while her teeth chattered. "Wasn't it a beautiful run!"

"It was—but something has got to be done with you," said Mrs. Ainslie firmly. "There's a farmhouse over there, Mr. Linton: I know the people, and they'll do anything they can for you. Hurry her over and get her wet things off—Mrs. Hardy will lend her some clothes." And Norah made a draggled and inglorious exit.

Mrs. Hardy received her with horrified exclamations and offers of all that she had in the house: so that presently Norah found herself drinking cup after cup of very hot tea and eating buttered toast with her father—attired in a plaid blouse of green and red in large checks, and a black velvet skirt that had seen better days; with carpet slippers lending a neat finish to a somewhat striking appearance. Without, farm hands rubbed down Killaloe and Brunette in the stable. Mrs. Hardy fluttered in and out, bringing more and yet more toast, until her guests protested vehemently that exhausted nature forbade them to eat another crumb.

"And wot is toast?" grumbled Mrs. Hardy, "and you ridin' all day in the cold!" She had been grievously disappointed at her visitors' refusing bacon and eggs. "The young lady'll catch 'er death, sure's fate! Just another cup, miss. Lor, who's that comin' in at the gate!"

"That" proved to be Squire Brand, who had appeared at the scene of Norah's disaster just after her retreat—being accused by Mrs. Ainslie of employing an aeroplane.

"I came to see if I could be of any use," he said. His eye fell on Norah in Mrs. Hardy's clothes, and he said, "Dear me!" suddenly, and for a moment lost the thread of his remarks. "You can't let her ride home, Linton—my car is here, and if your daughter will let me drive her home I'm sure Mr. Hardy will house her pony until to-morrow—you can send a groom over for it. I've a spare coat in the car. Yes, thank you, Mrs. Hardy, I should like a cup of tea very much."

Now that the excitement of the day was over, Norah was beginning to feel tired enough to be glad to escape the long ride home on a jaded horse. So, with Mrs. Hardy's raiment hidden beneath a gorgeous fur coat, she was presently in the Squire's car, slipping through the dusk of the lonely country lanes. The Squire liked Jim, and asked questions about him: and to talk of Jim was always the nearest way to Norah's heart. She had exhausted his present, and was as far back in his past as his triumphs in inter-State cricket, when they turned in at the Homewood avenue.

"I'm afraid I've talked an awful lot," she said, blushing. "You see, Jim and I are tremendous chums. I often think how lucky I was to have a brother like him, as I had only one!"

"Possibly Jim thinks the same about his sister," said the old man. He looked at her kindly; there was something very child-like in the small face, half-lost in the great fur collar of his coat.

"At all events, Jim has a good champion," he said.

"Oh, Jim doesn't need a champion," Norah answered. "Every one likes him, I think. And of course we think there's no one like him."

The motor stopped, and the Squire helped her out. It was too late to come in, he said; he bade her good night, and went back to the car.

Norah looked in the glass in the hall, and decided that her appearance was too striking to be kept to herself. A very battered felt riding-hat surmounted Mrs. Hardy's finery; it bore numerous mud-splashes, some of which had extended to her face. No one was in the hall; it was late, and presumably the Tired People were dressing for dinner. She headed for the kitchen, meeting, on the way, Allenby, who uttered a choking sound and dived into his pantry. Norah chuckled, and passed on.

Miss de Lisle sat near the range, knitting her ever-present muffler. She looked up, and caught her breath at the apparition that danced in—Norah, more like a well-dressed scarecrow than anything else, with her grey eyes bright among the mud-splashes. She held up Mrs. Hardy's velvet skirt in each hand, and danced solemnly up the long kitchen, pointing each foot daintily, in the gaudy carpet slippers.

"Oh my goodness!" ejaculated Miss de Lisle—and broke into helpless laughter.

Norah sat down by the fender and told the story of her day—with a cheerful interlude when Katty came in hurriedly, failed to see her until close upon her, and then collapsed. Miss de Lisle listened, twinkling.

"Well, you must go and dress," she said at length. "It would be only kind to every one if you came down to dinner like that, but I suppose it wouldn't do."

"It wouldn't be dignified," said Norah, looking, at the moment, as though dignity were the last thing she cared about. "Well, I suppose I must go." She gathered up her skirts and danced out again, pausing at the door to execute a high kick. Then she curtsied demurely to the laughing cook-lady, and fled to her room by a back staircase.

She came down a while later, tubbed and refreshed, in a dainty blue frock, with a black ribbon in her shining curls. The laughter had not yet died out of her eyes; she was humming one of Jim's school songs as she crossed the hall. Allenby was just turning from the door.

"A telegram, Miss Norah."

"Thanks, Allenby." She took it, still smiling. "I hope it isn't to say any one is coming to-night," she said, as she carried it to the light. "Wouldn't it be lovely if it was to tell us they had leave!" There was no need to specify whom "they" meant. "But I'm afraid that's too much to hope, just yet." She tore open the envelope.

There was a long silence as she stood there with the paper in her hand: a silence that grew gradually more terrible, while her face turned white. Over and over she read the scrawled words, as if in the vain hope that the thing they told might yet prove only a hideous dream from which, presently, she might wake. Then, as if very far away, she heard the butler's shaking voice.

"Miss Norah! Is it bad news?"

"You can send the boy away," she heard herself say, as though it were some other person speaking. "There isn't any answer. He has been killed."

"Not Mr. Jim?" Allenby's voice was a wail.

"Yes."

She turned from him and walked into the morning-room, shutting the door. In the grate a fire was burning; the leaping light fell on Jim's photograph, standing on a table near. She stared at it, still holding the telegram. Surely it was a dream—she had so often had it before. Surely she would soon wake, and laugh at herself.

The door was flung open, and her father came in, ruddy and splashed. She remembered afterwards the shape of a mud-splash on his sleeve. It seemed to be curiously important.

"Norah!—what is wrong?"

She put out her hands to him then, shaking. Jim had said it was her job to look after him, but she could not help him now. And no words would come.

"Is it Jim?" At the agony of his voice she gave a little choking cry, catching at him blindly. The telegram fluttered to the floor, and David Linton picked it up and read it. He laid the paper on the table and turned to her, holding out his hands silently, and she came to him and put her face on his breast, trembling. His arm tightened round her. So they stood, while the time dragged on.

He put her into a chair at last, and they looked at each other: they had said no word since that first moment.

"Well," said David Linton slowly, "we knew it might come. And we know that he died like a man, and that he never shirked. Thank God we had him, Norah. And thank God my son died a soldier, not a slacker."



CHAPTER XIV

CARRYING ON

After that first terrible evening, during which no one had looked upon their agony, David Linton and his child took up their life again and tried to splice the broken ends as best they might. Their guests, who came down to breakfast nervously, preparing to go away at once, found them in the dining-room, haggard and worn, but pleasantly courteous; they talked of the morning's news, of the frost that seemed commencing, of the bulbs that were sending delicate spear-heads up through the grass or the bare flower-beds. There were arrangements for the day to be made for those who cared to ride or drive: the trains to be planned for a gunner subaltern whose leave was expiring next day. Everything was quite as usual, outwardly.

"Pretty ghastly meal, what?" remarked the young gunner to a chum, as they went out on the terrace. "Rather like dancing at a funeral."

Philip Hardress came into the morning-room, where Mr. Linton and Norah were talking.

"I don't need to tell you how horribly sorry I am," he faltered.

"No—thanks, Phil."

"You—you haven't any details?"

"No."

"Wally will write as soon as he can," Norah added.

"Yes, of course. The others want me to say, sir, of course they will go away. They all understand. I can go too, just to the hotel. I can supervise Hawkins from there."

"I hope none of you will think of doing any such thing," David Linton said. "Our work here is just the same. Jim would never have wished us not to carry on."

"But——" Hardress began.

"There isn't any 'but.' Norah and I are not going to sit mourning, with our hands in front of us. We mean to work a bit harder, that's all. You see"—the ghost of a smile flickered across the face that had aged ten years in a night—"more than ever now, whatever we do for a soldier is done for Jim."

Hardress made a curious little gesture of protest.

"And I'm left—half of me!"

"You have got to help us, Phil," Norah said. "We need you badly."

"I can't do much," he said. "But as long as you want me, I'm here. Then I'm to tell the others, sir——"

"Tell them we hope they will help us to carry on as usual," said David Linton. "I'll come across with you presently, Phil, to look at the new cultivator: I hear it arrived last night."

He looked at Norah as the door closed.

"You're sure it isn't too much for you, my girl? I will send them away if you would rather we were by ourselves for a while."

"I promised Jim that whatever happened we'd keep smiling," Norah said. "He wouldn't want us to make a fuss. Jim always did so hate fusses, didn't he, Dad?"

She was quite calm. Even when Mrs. Hunt came hurrying over, and put her kind arms about her, Norah had no tears.

"I suppose we haven't realized it," she said. "Perhaps we're trying not to. I don't want to think of Jim as dead—he was so splendidly alive, ever since he was a tiny chap."

"Try to think of him as near you," Mrs. Hunt whispered.

"Oh, he is. I know Jim never would go far from us, if he could help it. I know he's watching, somewhere, and he will be glad if we keep our heads up and go straight on. He would trust us to do that." Her face changed. "Oh, Mrs. Hunt,—but it's hard on Dad!"

"He has you still."

"I'm only a girl," said Norah. "No girl could make up for a son: and such a son as Jim. But I'll try."

There came racing little feet in the hall, and Geoffrey burst in.

"It isn't true!" he shouted. "Say it isn't true, Norah! Allenby says the Germans have killed Jim—I know they couldn't." He tugged at her woollen coat. "Say it's a lie, Norah—Jim couldn't be dead!"

"Geoff—Geoff, dear!" Mrs. Hunt tried to draw him away.

"Don't!" Norah said. She put her arms round the little boy—and suddenly her head went down on his shoulder. The tears came at last. Mrs. Hunt went softly from the room.

There were plenty of tears in the household: The servants had all loved the big cheery lad, with the pleasant word for each one. They went about their work red-eyed, and Allenby chafed openly at the age that kept him at home, doing a woman's work, while boys went out to give their lives, laughing, for Empire.

"It ain't fair," he said to Miss de Lisle, who sobbed into the muffler she was knitting. "It ain't fair. Kids, they are—no more. They ain't meant to die. Oh, if I could only get at that there Kayser!"

Then, after a week of waiting, came Wally's letter.

*****

"Norah, Dear,—

"I don't know how to write to you. I can't bear to think about you and your father. It seems it must be only a bad dream—and all the time I know it isn't, even though I keep thinking I hear his whistle—the one he used for me.

"I had better tell you about it.

"We had orders to attack early one morning. Jim was awfully keen; he had everything ready, and he had been talking to the men until they were all as bucked up as they could be. You know, he was often pretty grave about his work, but I don't think I ever saw him look so happy as he did that morning. He looked just like a kid. He told me he felt as if he were going out on a good horse at Billabong. We were looking over our revolvers, and he said, 'That's the only thing that feels wrong; it ought to be a stock whip!'

"We hadn't much artillery support. Our guns were short of shells, as usual. But we took the first trench, and the next. Jim was just everywhere. He was always first; the men would have followed him down a precipice. He was laughing all the time.

"We didn't get much time before they counter-attacked. They came on in waves—as if there were millions of them, and we had a pretty stiff fight in the trench. It was fairly well smashed about. I was pretty busy about fifty yards away, but I saw Jim up on a broken traverse, using his revolver just as calmly as if he were practising in camp, and cheering on the men. He gave me a 'Coo-ee!'

"And then—oh, I don't know how to tell you. Just as I was looking at him a shell burst near him: and when the smoke blew over there was nothing—traverse and trench and all, it was just wiped out. I couldn't get near him—the Boches were pouring over in fresh masses, and we got the signal to retire—and I was the only one left to get the men back.

"He couldn't have felt anything; that's the only thing.

"I wish it had been me. I'm nobody's dog, and he was just everything to you two—and the best friend a fellow ever had. It would have been so much more reasonable if it had been me. I just feel that I hate myself for being alive. I would have saved him for you if I could, Norah, "Wally."

*****

There were letters, too, from Jim's Colonel, and from Major Hunt, and Garrett, and every other brother-officer whom Jim had sent to Homewood; and others that Norah and her father valued almost more highly—from men who had served under him. Letters that made him glow with pride—almost forgetting grief as they read them. It seemed so impossible to think that Jim would never come again.

"I can't feel as though he were dead," Norah said, looking up at her father. "I know I've got to get used to knowing he has gone away from us for always. But I like to think of him as having only changed work. Jim never could be idle in Heaven; he always used to say it seemed such a queer idea to sit all day in a white robe and play a harp. Jim's Heaven would have to be a very busy one, and I know he's gone there, Dad."

David Linton got up and went to the bookcase. He came back with Westward Ho! in his hand.

"I was reading Kingsley's idea of it last night," he said. "I think it helps, Norah. Listen. 'The best reward for having wrought well already, is to have more to do; and he that has been faithful over a few things, must find his account in being made ruler over many things. That is the true and heroical rest, which only is worthy of gentlemen and sons of God.' Jim was only a boy, but he went straight and did his best all his life. I think he has just been promoted to some bigger job."

So they held their heads high, as befitted people with just cause for being proud, and set themselves to find the rest that comes from hard work. There was plenty to do, for the house was always full of Tired People. Not that the Lintons ever tried to entertain their guests. Tired People came to a big, quiet house, where everything ran smoothly, and all that was possible was done for comfort. Beyond that, they did exactly as they chose. There were horses and the motor for those who cared to ride and drive; the links for golfers; walks with beautiful scenery for energetic folk, and dainty rooms with big easy-chairs, or restful lounges under the trees on the lawn, for those who asked from Fate nothing better than to be lazy. No one was expected to make conversation or to behave as an ordinary guest. Everywhere there was a pleasant feeling of homeliness and welcome; shy men became suddenly at their ease; nerve-racked men, strained with long months of the noise and horror of war, relaxed in the peace of Homewood, and went back to duty with a light step and a clear eye. Only there was missing the wild merriment of the first few weeks, when Jim and Wally dashed in and out perpetually and kept the house in a simmer of uncertainty and laughter. That could never come again.

But beyond the immediate needs of the Tired People there was much to plan and carry out. Conscription in England was an established fact; already there were few fit men to be seen out of uniform. David Linton looked forward to a time when shortage of labour, coupled with the deadly work of the German submarines, should mean a shortage of food; and he and Norah set themselves to provide against that time of scarcity. Miss de Lisle and Philip Hardress entered into every plan, lending the help of brains as well as hands. The farm was put under intensive culture, and the first provision made for the future was that of fertilizers, which, since most of them came from abroad, were certain to be scarce. Mr. Linton and Hardress breathed more freely when they had stored a two years' supply. The flock of sheep was increased; the fowl-run doubled in size, and put in charge of a disabled soldier, a one-armed Australian, whom Hardress found in London, ill and miserable, and added to the list of Homewood's patients—and cures. Young heifers were bought, and "boarded-out" at neighbouring farms; a populous community of grunting pigs occupied a little field. And in the house Norah and Miss de Lisle worked through the spring and summer, until the dry and spacious cellars and storerooms showed row upon row of shelves covered with everything that could be preserved or salted or pickled, from eggs to runner beans.

Sometimes the Tired People lent a hand, becoming interested in their hosts' schemes. Norah formed a fast friendship with a cheerful subaltern in the Irish Guards, who was with them for a wet fortnight, much of which he spent in the kitchen stoning fruit, making jam, and acting as bottler-in-chief to the finished product. There were many who asked nothing better than to work on the farm, digging, planting or harvesting: indeed, in the summer, one crop would have been ruined altogether by a fierce storm, but for the Tired People, who, from an elderly Colonel to an Australian signaller, flung themselves upon it, and helped to finish getting it under cover—carrying the last sheaves home just as the rain came down in torrents, and returning to Homewood in a soaked but triumphant procession. Indeed, nearly all the unending stream of guests came under the spell of the place; so that Norah used to receive anxious inquiries from various corners of the earth afterwards—from Egypt or Salonica would come demands as to the success of a catch-crop which the writer had helped to sow, or of a brood of Buff Orpingtons which he had watched hatching out in the incubator: even from German East Africa came a letter asking after a special litter of pigs! Perhaps it was that every one knew that the Lintons were shouldering a burden bravely, and tried to help.

They kept Jim very close to them. A stranger, hearing the name so often on their lips, might have thought that he was still with them. Together, they talked of him always; not sadly, but remembering the long, happy years that now meant a memory too dear ever to let go. Jim had once asked Norah for a promise. "If I go West," he said, "don't wear any horrible black frocks." So she went about in her ordinary dresses, especially the blue frocks he had loved—with just a narrow black band on her arm. There were fresh flowers under his picture every day, but she did not put them sadly. She would smile at the frank happy face as she arranged leaves and blossoms with a loving hand.

Later on, David Linton fitted up a carpenter's bench and a workshop; the days were too full for much thinking, but he found the evenings long. He enlisted Hardress in his old work of splint-making, and then found that half his guests used to stray out to the lit workshop after dinner and beg for jobs, so that before long the nearest Hospital Supply Depot could count on a steady output of work from Homewood. Mrs. Hunt and Norah used to come as polishers; Miss de Lisle suddenly discovered that her soul for cooking included a corner for carpentry, and became extraordinarily skilful in the use of chisel and plane. When the autumn days brought a chill into the air, Mr. Linton put a stove into the workshop; and it became a kind of club, where the whole household might often be found; they extended their activities to the manufacture of crutches, bed-rests, bed-tables, and half a dozen other aids to comfort for broken men. No work had helped David Linton so much.

In the early summer Wally came back on leave: a changed Wally, with grim lines where there had once been only merry ones in his lean, brown face. He did not want to come to Homewood; only when begged to come did he master the pitiful shrinking he felt from meeting them.

"I didn't know how to face you," he said. Norah had gone to meet him, and they were walking back from the station.

"Don't, Wally; you hurt," she said.

"It's true, though; I didn't. I feel as if you must hate me for coming back—alone."

"Hate you!—and you were Jim's chum!"

"I always came as Jim's chum," Wally said heavily. "From the very first, when I was a lonely little nipper at school, I sort of belonged to Jim. And now—well, I just can't realize it, Norah. I can't keep on thinking about him as dead. I know he is, and one minute I'm feeling half-insane about it, and the next I forget, and think I hear him whistling or calling me." He clenched his hands. "It's the minute after that that is the worst of all," he said.

For a time they did not speak. They walked on slowly, along the pleasant country lane with its blossoming hedges.

"I know," Norah said. "There's not much to choose between you and Dad and me, when it comes to missing Jim. But as for you—well you did come as Jim's chum first—and always; but you came just as much because you were yourself. You know you belonged to Billabong, as we all did. You can't cut yourself off from us now, Wally."

"I?" he echoed. "Well, if I do, I have mighty little left. But I felt that you couldn't want to see me. I know what it must be like to see me come back without him."

"I'm not going to say it doesn't hurt," said Norah. "Only it hurts you as much as it does us. And the thing that would be ever so much worse is for you not to come. Why, you're the only comfort we have left. Don't you see, you're like a bit of Jim coming back to us?"

"Oh, Norah—Norah!" he said. "If I could only have saved him!"

"Don't we know you'd have died quite happily if you could!" Norah said. "Just as happily as he would have died for you."

"He did, you know," Wally said. All the youth and joy had gone out of his voice, leaving it flat and toneless. "Two or three times that morning he kept me out of a specially hot spot, and took it himself. He was always doing it: we nearly punched each other's heads about it the day before—I told him he was using his rank unfairly. He just grinned and said subalterns couldn't understand necessary strategy in the field!"

"He would!" said Norah, laughing.

Wally stared at her.

"I didn't think I'd ever see you laugh again!"

"Not laugh!" Norah echoed. "Why, it wouldn't be fair to Jim if we didn't. We keep him as near us as we can—talk about him, and about all the old, happy times. We did have such awfully good times together, didn't we? We're never going to get far away from him."

The boy gave a great sigh.

"I've been getting a long way from everything," he said. "Since—since it happened I couldn't let myself think: it was just as if I were going mad. The only thing I've wanted to do was to fight, and I've had that."

"He looks as if his mind were more tired than his body," David Linton said that evening. "One can see that he has just been torturing himself with all sorts of useless thoughts. You'll have to take him in hand, Norah. Put the other work aside for a while and go out with him—ride as much as you can. It won't do you any harm, either."

"We never thought old Wally would be one of the Tired People," Norah said musingly.

"No, indeed. And I think there has been no one more utterly tired. It won't do, Norah: the boy will be ill if we don't look after him."

"We've just got to make him feel how much we want him," Norah said.

"Yes. And we have to teach him to think happily about Jim—not to fight it all the time. Fighting won't make it any better," said David Linton, with a sigh.

But there was no riding for Wally, for a while. The next day found him too ill to get up, and the doctor, sent for hastily, talked of shock and over-strain, and ordered bed until his temperature should be pleased to go down: which was not for many a weary day. Possibly it was the best thing that could have happened to Wally. He grew, if not reconciled, at least accustomed to his loss; grew, too, to thinking himself a coward when he saw the daily struggle waged by the two people he loved best. And Norah was wise enough to call in other nurses: chief of them the Hunt babies, Alison and Michael, who rolled on his bed and played with him, while Geoffrey sat as close to him as possible, and could hardly be lured from the room. It was not for weeks after his return that they heard Wally laugh; and then it was at some ridiculous speech of Michael's that he suddenly broke into the ghost of his old mirth.

Norah's heart gave a leap.

"Oh, he's better!" she thought. "You blessed little Michael!"

And so, healing came to the boy's bruised soul. Not that the old, light-hearted Wally came back: but he learned to talk of Jim, and no longer to hug his sorrow in silence. Something became his of the peace that had fallen upon Norah and her father. It was all they could hope for, to begin with.

They said good-bye to him before they considered him well enough to go back to the trenches. But the call for men was insistent, and the boy himself was eager to go.

"Come back to us soon," Norah said, wistfully.

"Oh, I'm safe to come back," Wally said. "I'm nobody's dog, you know."

"That's not fair!" she flashed. "Say you're sorry for saying it!"

He flushed.

"I'm sorry if I hurt you, Nor. I suppose I was a brute to say that." Something of his old quaint fun came into his eyes for a moment. "Anyhow it's something to be somebody's dog—especially if one happens to belong to Billabong-in-Surrey!"



CHAPTER XV

PRISONERS AND CAPTIVES

The church was half in ruins. Great portions of the roof had been torn away by shell-fire, and there were gaping holes in the walls through which could be caught glimpses of sentries going backwards and forwards. Sometimes a grey battalion swung by; sometimes a German officer peered in curiously, with a sneer on his lips. The drone of aircraft came from above, through the holes where the rafters showed black against the sky. Ever the guns boomed savagely from beyond.

There were no longer any seats in the church. They had all been broken up for camp-fires—even the oaken pulpit had gone. The great empty space had been roughly cleared of fallen masonry, which had been flung in heaps against the wall; on the stone floor filthy straw was thinly spread. On the straw lay row upon row of wounded men—very quiet for the most part; they had found that it did not pay to make noise enough to annoy the guards who smoked and played cards in a corner.

The long day—how long only the men on the straw knew—was drawing to a close. The sun sank behind the western window, which the guns had spared; and the stained glass turned to a glory of scarlet and gold and blue. The shafts of colour lay across the broken altar, whence everything had been stripped; they bathed the shattered walls in a beauty that was like a cloak over the nakedness of their ruin. Slowly they crept over the floor, as the sun sank lower, touching the straw with rosy fingers, falling gently on broken bodies and pain-drawn faces; and weary eyes looked gratefully up to the window where a figure of Christ with a child in His arms stood glorious in the light, and blessed them with the infinite pity of His smile.

A little Cockney lad with a dirty bandage round his head, who had tossed in pain all day on the chancel steps, turned to the window to greet the daily miracle of the sunset.

"Worf waiting for, all the day, that is!" he muttered. The restlessness left him, and his eyes closed, presently, in sleep.

Slowly the glory died away, and as it passed a little figure in a rusty black cassock came in, making his way among the men on the straw. It was the French priest, who had refused to leave his broken church: a little, fat man, not in the least like a hero, but with as knightly a soul as was ever found in armour and with lance in rest. He passed from man to man, speaking in quaint English, occasionally dropping gladly into French when he found some one able to answer him in his own language. He had nothing to give them but water; but that he carried tirelessly many times a day. His little store of bandages and ointment had gone long ago, but he bathed wounds, helped cramped men to change their position, and did the best he could to make the evil straw into the semblance of a comfortable bed. To the helpless men on the floor of the church his coming meant something akin to Paradise.

He paused near a little Irishman with a broken leg, a man of the Dublin Fusiliers, whose pain had not been able to destroy his good temper.

"How are you to-night, mon garcon?"

"Yerra, not too bad, Father," said the Irishman. "If I could have just a taste of water, now?" He drank deeply as the priest lifted his head, and sank back with a word of thanks.

"This feather pillow of mine is apt to slip if I don't watch it," he said, wriggling the back of his head against the cold stone of the floor, from which the straw had worked away. "I dunno could you gather it up a bit, Father." He grinned. "I'd ask you to put me boots under me for a pillow, but if them thieving guards found them loose, they'd shweep them from me."

"Ss-h, my son!" the priest whispered warningly. He shook up a handful of straw and made it as firm as he could under the man's head. "It is not prudent to speak so loud. Remember you cannot see who may be behind you."

"Indeed and I cannot," returned Denny Callaghan. "I'll remember, Father. That's great!" He settled his head thankfully on the straw pillow. "I'll sleep aisier to-night for that."

"And Monsieur le Capitaine—has he moved yet?" The priest glanced at a motionless form near them.

"Well, indeed he did, Father, this afternoon. He gev a turn, an' he said something like 'Tired People.' I thought there was great sense in that, if he was talkin' to us, so I was cheered up about him—but not a word have I got out of him since. But it's something that he spoke at all."

The cure bent over the quiet figure. Two dark eyes opened, as if with difficulty, and met his.

"Norah," said Jim Linton. "Are you there, Norah?"

"I am a friend, my son," said the cure. "Are you in pain?"

The dark eyes looked at him uncomprehendingly. Then he murmured, "Water!"

"It is here." The little priest held the heavy head, and Jim managed to drink a little. Something like a shadow of a smile came into his eyes as the priest wiped his lips. Then they closed again.

"If they would send us a doctor!" muttered the cure, in his own language, longingly. "Ma joi, what a lad!" He looked down in admiration at the splendid helpless body.

"He won't die, Father, will he?"

"I do not know, my son. I can find no wound, except the one on his head—nothing seems broken. Perhaps he will be better to-morrow." He gave the little Irishman his blessing and moved away. There were many eager eyes awaiting him.

Jim was restless during the night; Denny Callaghan, himself unable to sleep, watched him muttering and trying to turn, but unable to move.

"I doubt but his back's broken," said the little man ruefully. "Yerra, what a pity!" He tried to soothe the boy with kind words; and towards the dawn Jim slept heavily.

He woke when the sun was shining upon him through a rift in the wall. The church was full of smothered sounds—stifled groans from helpless men, stiffened by lying still, and trying to move. Jim managed to raise himself a little, at which Denny Callaghan gave an exclamation of relief.

"Hurroo! Are you better, sir?"

"Where am I?" Jim asked thickly.

"'Tis in a church you are, sir, though it's not much like it," said the little man. "The Germans call it a hospital. 'Tis all I wish they may have the like themselves, and they wounded. Are you better, sir?"

"I . . . think I'm all right," Jim said. He was trying to regain his scattered faculties. "So they've got me!" He tried to look at Callaghan. "What's your regiment?"

"The Dubs, sir. 'Tis hard luck; I kem back wounded from Suvla Bay and they sent me out to the battalion here; and I'd not been with them a week before I got landed again. Now 'tis a German prison ahead—and by all one hears they're not rest-camps."

"No," said Jim. He tried to move, but failed, sinking back with a stifled groan. "I wish I knew if I was damaged much. Are there any doctors here?"

"There was two, a while back. They fixed us up somehow, and we haven't seen a hair of them since. The guards throw rations—of a sort—at us twice a day. 'Tis badly off we'd be, if it weren't for the priest."

"Is he French?"

"He is—and a saint, if there ever was one. There he comes now." Callaghan crossed himself reverently.

A hush had come over the church. The cure, in his vestments, had entered, going slowly to the altar.

Jim struggled up on his elbow. There was perfect silence in the church; men who had been talking ceased suddenly, men who moaned in their pain bit back their cries. So they lay while the little priest celebrated Mass, as he had done every morning since the Germans swept over his village: at first alone, and, since the first few days to a silent congregation of helpless men. They were of all creeds and some of no creed at all: but they prayed after him as men learn to pray when they are at grips with things too big for them. He blessed them, at the end, with uplifted hand; and dim eyes followed him as he went slowly from the church.

He was back among them, presently, in the rusty black cassock. The guards had brought in the men's breakfast—great cans of soup and loaves of hard, dark bread. They put them down near the door, tramping out with complete disregard of the helpless prisoners. The priest would see to them, aided by the few prisoners who could move about, wounded though they were. In any case the guard had no order to feed prisoners; they were not nurse-maids, they said.

"Ah, my son! You are awake!"

Jim smiled up at the cure.

"Have I been asleep long, sir?"

"Three days. They brought you in last Friday night. Do you not remember?"

"No," said Jim. "I don't remember coming here." He drank some soup eagerly, but shook his head at the horrible bread. The food cleared his head, and when the little cure had gone away, promising to return as soon as possible, he lay quietly piecing matters together in his mind. Callaghan helped him: the Dublins had been in the line next his own regiment when they had gone "over the top" on that last morning.

"Oh, I remember all that well enough," Jim said. "We took two lines of trench, and then they came at us like a wall; the ground was grey with them. And I was up on a smashed traverse, trying to keep the men together, when it went up too."

"A shell was it?"

Jim shook his head.

"A shell did burst near us, but it wasn't that. No, the trench was mined, and the mine went off a shade too late. They delayed, somehow; it should have gone off if we took the trench, before they counter-attacked. As it was, it must have killed as many of their men as ours. They told me about it afterwards."

"Afterwards?" said Callaghan, curiously. He looked at Jim, a little doubtful as to whether he really knew what he was talking about. "Did ye not come straight here then, sir?"

"I did not; I was buried," said Jim grimly. "The old mine went up right under me, and I went up too. I came down with what seemed like tons of earth on top of me; I was covered right in, I tell you, only I managed to get some of the earth away in front of my nose and mouth. I was lying on my side, near the edge of a big heap of dirt, with my hands near my face. If I'd been six inches further back there wouldn't have been the ghost of a chance for me. I got some of the earth and mud away, and found I could breathe, just as I was choking. But I was buried for all that. All our chaps were fighting on top of me!"

"D'ye tell me!" gasped Callaghan incredulously.

"I could feel the boots," Jim said. "I'm bruised with them yet. What time did we go over that morning?—nine o'clock, wasn't it?"

"It was, sir."

"Well, it was twelve or one o'clock when they dug me out. They re-took the trench, and started to dig themselves in, and they found me; I've a spade-cut on my hand. My Aunt, that was a long three hours!"

"Did they treat you decent, sir?"

"They weren't too bad," Jim said. "I couldn't move; I suppose it was the weight on me, and the bruising—at least, I hope so. They felt me all over—there was a rather decent lieutenant there, who gave me some brandy. He told me he didn't think there was anything broken. But I couldn't stir, and it hurt like fury when they touched me."

"And how long were you there, sir?"

"They had to keep me until night—there was no way of sending back prisoners. So I lay on a mud-heap, and the officer-boy talked to me—he had been to school in England."

"That's where they larned him any decency he had," said Callaghan.

"It might be. But he wasn't a bad sort. He looked after me well enough. Then, after nightfall, they sent a stretcher party over with me. The German boy shook hands with me when we were starting, and said he was afraid he wouldn't see me again, as we were pretty sure to be shelled by the British."

"And were you, sir?"

"Rather. The first thing I knew was a bit of shrapnel through the sleeve of my coat; I looked for the hole this morning, to see if I was remembering rightly, and sure enough, here it is." He held up his arm, and showed a jagged tear in his tunic. "But that's where I stop remembering anything. I suppose I must have caught something else then. Why is my head tied up? It was all right when they began to carry me over."

"Ye have a lump the size of an egg low down on the back of your head, sir," said Callaghan. "And a nasty little cut near your temple."

"H'm!" said Jim. "I wondered why it ached! Well I must have got those from our side on the way across. I hope they got a Boche or two as well."

"I dunno," Callaghan said. "The fellas that dumped you down said something in their own haythin tongue. I didn't understand it, but it sounded as if they were glad to be rid of you."

"Well, I wouldn't blame them," Jim said. "I'm not exactly a featherweight, and it can't be much fun to be killed carrying the enemy about, whether you're a Boche or not."

He lay for a while silently, thinking. Did they know at home yet? he wondered anxiously. And then he suddenly realized that his fall must have looked like certain death: that if they had heard anything it would be that he had been killed. He turned cold at the thought. What had they heard—his father, Norah? And Wally—what did he think? Was Wally himself alive? He might even be a prisoner. He turned at that thought to Callaghan, his sudden move bringing a stifled cry to his lips.

"Did they—are there any other officers of my regiment here?"

"There are not," said Callaghan. "I got the priest to look at your badges, sir, the way he could find out if there was anny more of ye. But there is not. Them that's here is mostly Dublins and Munsters, with a sprinkling of Canadians. There's not an officer or man of the Blankshires here at all, barring yourself."

"Will the Germans let us communicate with our people?"

"Communicate, is it?" said the Irishman. "Yerra, they'll not let anyone send so much as a scratch on a post-card." He dropped his voice. "Whisht now, sir: the priest's taking all our addresses, and he'll do his best to send word to every one at home."

"But can he depend on getting through?"

"Faith, he cannot. But 'tis the only chance we've got. The poor man's nothing but a prisoner himself; he's watched if he goes tin yards from the church. So I dunno, at all, will he ever manage it, with the suspicions they have of him."

Jim sighed impatiently. He could do nothing, then, nothing to keep the blow from falling on the two dear ones at home. He thought of trying to bribe the German guards, and felt for his pocket-book, but it was gone; some careful Boche had managed to relieve him of it while he had been unconscious. And he was helpless, a log—while over in England Norah and his father were, perhaps, already mourning him as dead. His thoughts travelled to Billabong, where Brownie and Murty O'Toole and the others kept the home ready for them all, working with the love that makes nothing a toil, and planning always for the great day that should bring them all back. He pictured the news arriving—saw Brownie's dismayed old face, and heard her cry of incredulous pain. And there was nothing he could do. It seemed unbelievable that such things could be, in a sane world. But then, the world was no longer sane; it had gone mad nearly two years before, and he was only one of the myriad atoms caught into the swirl of its madness.

The cure came again, presently, and saw his troubled face. "You are in pain, my son?"

"No—I'm all right if I keep quiet," Jim answered. "But it's my people. Callaghan says you will try to let them know, Father."

"I am learning you all," said the priest, "names, regiments, and numbers is it not? I dare not put them on paper: I have been searched three times already, even to my shoes. But I hope that my chance will come before long. Then I will send them to your War Office." He beamed down on Jim so hopefully that it seemed rather likely that he would find a private telegraph office of his own, suddenly. "Now I will learn your name and regiment." He repeated them several times, nodding his head.

"Yes, that is an easy one," he said. "Some of them are very terrible, to a Frenchman; our friend here"—he looked quaintly at Callaghan—"has a name which it twists the tongue to say. And now, my son, I would like to examine you, since you are conscious. I am the only doctor—a poor one, I fear. But perhaps we will find out together that there is nothing to be uneasy about."

That, indeed, was what they did find out, after a rather agonizing half-hour. Jim was quite unable to move his legs, being so bruised that there was scarcely a square inch of him that was not green and blue and purple. One hip bore the complete impress of a foot, livid and angry.

"Yes, that chap jumped on me from a good height," Jim said when the cure exclaimed at it. "I thought he had smashed my leg."

"He went near it," said the cure. "Indeed, my son, you are beaten to a jelly. But that will recover itself. You can breathe without pain? That is well. Now we will look at the head." He unwrapped the bandages and felt the lump tenderly. "Ah, that is better; a little concussion, I think, mon brave; it is that which kept you so quiet when you stayed with us at first. And the cut heals well; that comes of being young and strong, with clean, healthy blood." He bathed the head, and replaced the bandages, sighing that he had no clean ones. "But with you it matters little; you will not need them in a few days. Then perhaps we will wash these and they will be ready for the next poor boy." He smiled at Jim. "Move those legs as much as you can, my son, and rub them." He trotted away.

"And that same is good advice," said Callaghan. "It will hurt to move, sir, and you beaten to a pulp first and then stiffening for the three days you're after lying here; 'tis all I wish I could rub you, with a good bottle of Elliman's to do it with. But if them Huns move you 'twill hurt a mighty lot more than if you move yourself. Themselves is the boys for that; they think they've got a feather in their caps if they get an extra yelp out of annywan. So do the best you can, sir."

"I will," said Jim—and did his best, for long hours every day. It was weary work, with each movement torture, and for a time very little encouragement came in the shape of improvement: then, slowly, with rubbing and exercise, the stiffened muscles began to relax. Callaghan cheered him on, forgetting his own aching leg in his sympathy for the boy in his silent torment. In the intervals of "physical jerks," Jim talked to his little neighbour, whose delight knew no bounds when he heard that Jim knew and cared for his country. He himself was a Cork man, with a wife and two sons; Jim gathered that their equal was not to be found in any town in Ireland. Callaghan occasionally lamented the "foolishness" that had kept him in the Army, when he had a right to be home looking after Hughie and Larry. "'Tis not much the Army gives you, and you giving it the best years of your life," he said. "I'd be better out of it, and home with me boys."

"Then you wouldn't let them go to the war, if they were old enough?" Jim asked.

"If they were old enough 'twould not be asking my liberty they'd be," rejoined Mr. Callaghan proudly. "Is it my sons that 'ud shtand out of a fight like this?" He glared at Jim, loftily unconscious of any inconsistency in his remarks.

"Well, there's plenty of your fellow-countrymen that won't go and fight, Cally!" said the man beyond him—a big Yorkshireman.

"There's that in all countries," said Callaghan calmly. "They didn't all go in your part of the country, did they, till they were made? Faith, I'm towld there's a few there yet in odd corners—and likely to be till after the war." The men round roared joyfully, at the expense of the Yorkshireman.

"And 'tis not in Ireland we have that quare baste the con-sci-en-tious objector," went on Callaghan, rolling the syllables lovingly on his tongue. "That's an animal a man wouldn't like to meet, now! Whatever our objectors are in Ireland, they're surely never con-sci-en-tious!"

Jim gave a crack of laughter that brought the roving grey eye squarely upon him.

"Even in Australia, that's the Captain's country," said the soft Irish voice, "I've heard tell there's a boy or two there out of khaki—maybe they're holding back for conscription too. But wherever the boys are that don't go, none of them have a song and dance made about them, barring only the Irish."

"What about your Sinn Feiners?" some one sang out. Callaghan's face fell.

"Yerra, they have the country destroyed," he admitted. "And nine out of every ten don't know annything about politics or annything else at all, only they get talked over, and towld that they're patriots if they'll get howld of a gun and do a little drilling at night—an' where's the country boy that wouldn't give his ears for a gun! An' the English Gov'mint, that could stop it all with the stroke of a pen, hasn't the pluck to bring in conscription in Ireland."

"You're right there, Cally," said some one.

"I know well I'm right. But the thousands and tens of thousands of Irish boys that went to the war and fought till they died—they'll be forgotten, and the Sinn Fein scum'll be remembered. If the Gov'mint had the pluck of a mouse they'd be all right. I tell you, boys, 'twill be the Gov'mint's own fault if we see the haythin Turks parading the fair fields of Ireland, with their long tails held up by the Sinn Feiners!" Callaghan relapsed into gloomy contemplation of this awful possibility, and refused to be drawn further. Even when Jim, desiring to be tactful, mentioned a famous Irish V.C. who had, single-handed, slain eight Germans, he declined to show any enthusiasm.

"Ah, what V.C.!" he said sourly. "Sure, his owld father wouldn't make a fuss of him. 'Why didn't he do more?' says he. 'I often laid out twenty men myself with a stick, and I coming from Macroom Fair. It is a bad trial of Mick that he could kill only eight, and he having a rifle and bayonet!' he says. Cock him up with a V.C.!" After which Jim ceased to be consoling and began to exercise his worst leg—knowing well that the sight of his torments would speedily melt Denny's heart and make him forget the sorrows of Ireland.

The guards did not trouble them much; they kept a strict watch, which was not difficult, as all the prisoners were partially disabled; and then considered their duty discharged by bringing twice a day the invariable meal of soup and bread. No one liked to speculate on what had gone to the making of the soup; it was a pale, greasy liquid, with strange lumps in it, and tasted as dish-water may be supposed to taste. Jim learned to eat the sour bread by soaking it in the soup. He had no inclination to eat, but he forced himself to swallow the disgusting meals, so that he might keep up his strength, just as he worked his stiff limbs and rubbed them most of the day. For there was but one idea in Jim Linton's mind—escape.

Gradually he became able to sit up, and then to move a little, hobbling painfully on a stick which had been part of a broken pew, and endeavouring to take part in looking after the helpless prisoners, and in keeping the church clean, since the guards laughed at the idea of helping at either. Jim had seen something of the treatment given to wounded German soldiers in England, and he writhed to think of them, tended as though they were our own sick, while British prisoners lay and starved in filthy holes. But the little cure rebuked him.

"But what would you, my son? They are canaille—without breeding, without decency, without hearts. Are we to put ourselves on that level?"

"I suppose not—but it's a big difference, Father," Jim muttered.

"The bigger the difference, the more honour on our side," said the little priest. "And things pass. Long after you and I and all these poor lads are forgotten it will be remembered that we came out of this war with our heads up. But they——!" Suddenly fierce scorn filled his quiet eyes. "They will be the outcasts of the world!"

Wherefore Jim worked on, and tried to take comfort by the cure's philosophy; although there were many times when he found it hard to digest. It was all very well to be cheerful about the verdict of the future, but difficult to forget the insistent present, with the heel of the Hun on his neck. It was sometimes easier to be philosophic by dreaming of days when the positions should be reversed.

He was able to walk a little when the order came to move. The guards became suddenly busy; officers whom the prisoners had not seen before came in and out, and one evening the helpless were put roughly into farm carts and taken to the station, while those able to move by themselves were marched after them—marched quickly, with bayonet points ready behind them to prod stragglers. It was nearly dark when they were thrust roughly into closed trucks, looking back for the last time on the little cure, who had marched beside them, with an arm for two sick men, and now stood on the platform, looking wistfully at them. He put up his hand solemnly.

"God keep you, my sons!"

A German soldier elbowed him roughly aside. The doors of the trucks were clashed together, leaving them in darkness; and presently, with straining and rattling and clanging, the train moved out of the station.

"Next stop, Germany!" said Denny Callaghan from the corner where he had been put down. "And not a ticket between the lot of us!"



CHAPTER XVI

THROUGH THE DARKNESS

"I think that's the last load," Jim Linton said.

He had wriggled backwards out of a black hole in the side of a black cupboard; and now sat back on his heels, gasping. His only article of attire was a pair of short trousers. From his hair to his heels he was caked with dirt.

"Well, praise the pigs for that," said a voice from the blackness of the cupboard.

Some one switched on a tiny electric light. Then it could be seen, dimly, that the cupboard was just large enough to hold four men, crouching so closely that they almost touched each other. All were dressed—or undressed—as Jim was; all were equally dirty. Their blackened faces were set and grim. And whether they spoke, or moved, or merely sat still, they were listening—listening.

All four were British officers. Marsh and Fullerton were subalterns belonging to a cavalry regiment. Desmond was a captain—a Dublin Fusilier; and Jim Linton completed the quartette; and they sat in a hole in the ground under the floor of an officers' barrack in a Westphalian prison-camp. The yawning opening in front of them represented five months' ceaseless work, night after night. It was the mouth of a tunnel.

"I dreamed to-day that we crawled in," Marsh said, in a whisper—they had all learned to hear the faintest murmur of speech. "And we crawled, and crawled, and crawled: for years, it seemed. And then we saw daylight ahead, and we crawled out—in Piccadilly Circus!"

"That was 'some' tunnel, even in a dream," Desmond said.

"I feel as if it were 'some' tunnel now," remarked Jim—still breathing heavily.

"Yes—you've had a long spell, Linton. We were just beginning to think something was wrong."

"I thought I might as well finish—and then another bit of roof fell in, and I had to fix it," Jim answered. "Well, it won't be gardening that I'll go in for when I get back to Australia; I've dug enough here to last me my life!"

"Hear, hear!" said some one. "And what now?"

"Bed, I think," Desmond said. "And to-morrow night—the last crawl down that beastly rabbit-run, if we've luck. Only this time we won't crawl back."

He felt within a little hollow in the earth wall, and brought out some empty tins and some bottles of water; and slowly, painstakingly, they washed off the dirt that encrusted them. It was a long business, and at the end of it Desmond inspected them all, and was himself inspected, to make sure that no tell-tale streaks remained. Finally he nodded, satisfied, and then, with infinite caution, he slid back a panel and peered out into blackness—having first extinguished their little light. There was no sound. He slipped out of the door, and returned after a few moments.

"All clear," he whispered, and vanished.

One by one they followed him, each man gliding noiselessly away. They had donned uniform coats and trousers before leaving, and closed the entrance to the tunnel with a round screen of rough, interlaced twigs which they plastered with earth. The tins were buried again, with the bottles. Ordinarily each man carried away an empty bottle, to be brought back next night filled with water; but there was no further need of this. To-morrow night, please God, there would be no returning; no washing, crouched in the darkness, to escape the eagle eye of the guards; no bitter toil in the darkness, listening with strained ears all the while.

Jim was the last to leave. He slid the panel into position, and placed against it the brooms and mops used in keeping the barrack clean. As he handled them one by one, a brush slipped and clattered ever so slightly. He caught at it desperately, and then stood motionless, beads of perspiration breaking out upon his forehead. But no sound came from without, and presently he breathed more freely.

He stood in a cupboard under the stairs. It was Desmond who first realized that there must be space beyond it, who had planned a way in, and thence to cut a tunnel to freedom. They had found, or stolen, or manufactured, tools, and had cut the sliding panel so cunningly that none of the Germans who used the broom-cupboard had suspected its existence. The space on the far side of the wall had given them room to begin their work. Gradually it had been filled with earth until there was barely space for them to move; then the earth as they dug it out had to be laboriously thrust under the floor of the building, which was luckily raised a little above ground. They had managed to secrete some wire, and, having tapped the electric supply which lit the barrack, had carried a switch-line into their "dug-out." But the tunnel itself had, for the most part, been done in utter blackness. Three times the roof had fallen in badly, on the second occasion nearly burying Jim and Fullerton; it was considered, now, that Linton was a difficult man to bury, with an unconquerable habit of resurrecting himself. A score of times they had narrowly escaped detection. For five months they had lived in a daily and nightly agony of fear—not of discovery itself, or its certain savage punishment, but of losing their chance.

There were eight officers altogether in the "syndicate," and four others knew of their plan—four who were keen to help, but too badly disabled from wounds to hope for anything but the end of the war. They worked in shifts of four—one quartette stealing underground each night, as soon as the guards relaxed their vigil, while the others remained in the dormitories, ready to signal to the working party, should any alarm occur, and, if possible, to create a disturbance to hold the attention of the Germans for a little. They had succeeded in saving the situation three times when a surprise roll-call was made during the night—thanks to another wire which carried an electric alarm signal underground from the dormitory. Baylis, who had been an electrical engineer in time of peace, had managed the wiring; it was believed among the syndicate that when Baylis needed any electric fitting very badly he simply went and thought about it so hard that it materialized, like the gentleman who evolved a camel out of his inner consciousness.

One of the romances of the Great War might be written about the way in which prisoners bent on escape were able to obtain materials for getting out, and necessary supplies when once they were away from the camp. Much of how it was done will never be known, for the organization was kept profoundly secret, and those who were helped by it were often pledged solemnly to reveal nothing. Money—plenty of money—was the only thing necessary; given the command of that, the prisoner who wished to break out would find, mysteriously, tools or disguises, or whatever else he needed within the camp, and, after he had escaped, the three essentials, without which he had very little chance—map, compass, and civilian clothes. Then, having paid enormous sums for what had probably cost the supply system a few shillings, he was at liberty to strike for freedom—with a section of German territory—a few miles or a few hundred—to cross; and finally the chance of circumventing the guards on the Dutch frontier. It was so desperate an undertaking that the wonder was, not that so many failed, but that so many succeeded.

Jim Linton had no money. His was one of the many cases among prisoners in which no letters over seemed to reach home—no communication to be opened up with England. For some time he had not been permitted to write, having unfortunately managed to incur the enmity of the camp commandant by failing to salute him with the precise degree of servility which that official considered necessary to his dignity. Then, when at length he was allowed to send an occasional letter, he waited in vain for any reply, either from his home or his regiment. Possibly the commandant knew why; he used to look at Jim with an evil triumph in his eye which made the boy long to take him by his fat throat and ask him whether indeed his letters ever got farther than the office waste-paper basket.

Other officers in the camp would have written about him to their friends, so that the information could be passed on to Jim's father; but in all probability their letters also would have been suppressed, and Jim refused to allow them to take the risk. Letters were too precious, and went astray too easily; it was not fair to add to the chances of their failing to reach those who longed for them at home. And then, there was always the hope that his own might really have got through, even though delayed; that some day might come answers, telling that at last his father and Norah and Wally were no longer mourning him as dead. He clung to the hope though one mail day after another left him bitterly disappointed. In a German prison-camp there was little to do except hope.

Jim would have fared badly enough on the miserable food of the camp, but for the other officers. They received parcels regularly, the contents of which were dumped into a common store; and Jim and another "orphan" were made honorary members of the mess, with such genuine heartiness that after the first protests they ceased to worry their hosts with objections, and merely tried to eat as little as possible.

Jim thought about them gratefully on this last night as he slipped out of the cupboard and made his way upstairs, moving noiselessly as a cat on the bare boards. What good chaps they were! How they had made him welcome!—even though his coming meant that they went hungrier. They were such a gay, laughing little band; there was not one of them who did not play the game, keeping a cheery front to the world and meeting privation and wretchedness with a joke and a shrug. If that was British spirit, then Jim decided that to be British was a pretty big thing.

It was thanks to Desmond and Fullerton that he had been able to join the "syndicate." They had plenty of money, and had insisted on lending him his share of the expenses, representing, when he had hesitated, that they needed his strength for the work of tunnelling—after which Jim had laboured far more mightily than they had ever wished, or even suspected. He was fit and strong again now; lean and pinched, as were they all, but in hard training. Hope had keyed him up to a high pitch. The last night in this rat-hole; to-morrow——!

A light flashed downstairs and a door flung open just as he reached the landing. Jim sprang to his dormitory, flinging off his coat as he ran with leaping, stealthy strides. Feet were tramping up the stairs behind him. He dived into his blankets and drew them up under his chin, just as he had dived hurriedly into bed a score of times at school when an intrusive master had come upon a midnight "spread"; but with his heart pounding with fear as it had never pounded at school. What did they suspect? Had they found out anything?

The guard tramped noisily into the room, under a big Feldwebel, or sergeant-major. He flashed his lantern down the long room, and uttered a sharp word of command that brought the sleepers to their feet, blinking and but half awake. Then he called the roll, pausing when he came to Jim.

"You sleep in a curious dress. Where is your shirt?"

"Drying," said Jim curtly. "I washed it—I've only one."

"Enough for an English swine-hound," said the German contemptuously. He passed on to the next man, and Jim sighed with relief.

Presently the guard clanked out, and the prisoners returned to their straw mattresses.

"That was near enough," whispered Baylis, who was next to Jim.

"A good deal too near," Jim answered. "However, it ought to be fairly certain that they won't spring another surprise-party on us to-morrow. And a miss is as good as a mile." He turned over, and in a moment was sleeping like a baby.

The next day dragged cruelly.

To the eight conspirators it seemed as long as the weary stretch of months since they had come to the camp. For a long while they had avoided each other as far as possible in public, knowing that even two men who talked much together were liable to be suspected of plotting; on this last day they became afraid even to look at each other, and wandered about, each endeavouring to put as great a distance as possible between himself and the other seven. It became rather like a curious game of hide-and-seek, and by evening they were thoroughly "jumpy," with their nerves all on edge.

They had no preparations to make. Scarcely any of their few possessions could be taken with them; they would find outside—if ever they got there—food and clothing. They had managed to make rough knives that were fairly serviceable weapons; beyond these, and a few small personal belongings they took nothing except the clothes they wore—and they wore as little as possible, and those the oldest and shabbiest things to be found. So there was nothing to do, all that last day, but watch the slow hours pass, and endeavour to avoid falling foul of any of the guards—no easy matter, since every German delighted in any chance of making trouble for a prisoner. Nothing but to think and plan, as they had planned and thought a thousand times before; to wonder desperately was all safe still—had the door been found in the cupboard under the stairs? was the tunnel safe, or had it chosen to-day of all days to fall in again? was the exit—in a bed of runner beans—already known and watched? The Huns were so cunning in their watchfulness; it was quite likely that they knew all about their desperate enterprise, and were only waiting to pounce upon them in the instant that success should seem within their grasp. That was how they loved to catch prisoners.

The age-long afternoon dragged to a close. They ate their supper, without appetite—which was a pity, since the meagre store of food in the mess had been recklessly ransacked, to give them a good send-off. Then another hour—muttering good-byes now and then, as they prowled about; and finally, to bed, to lie there for hours of darkness and silence. Gradually the noise of the camp died down. From the guard-room came, for a while, loud voices and harsh laughter; then quiet fell there too, and presently the night watch tramped through the barrack on its last visit of inspection, flashing lanterns into the faces of the prisoners. To-night the inspection seemed unusually thorough. It set their strained nerves quivering anew.

Then came an hour of utter stillness and darkness; the eight prisoners lying with clenched hands and set teeth, listening with terrible intentness. Finally, when Jim was beginning to feel that he must move, or go mad, a final signal came from the doorway. He heard Baylis say "Thank God!" under his breath, as they slipped out of bed in the darkness and felt their way downstairs. They were the last to come. The others were all crouched in the cupboard, waiting for them, as they reached its door; and just as they did so, the outer doorway swung open, with a blaze of light, and the big Feldwebel strode in.

"Shut the door!" Jim whispered. He launched himself at the German as he spoke, with a spring like a panther's. His fist caught him between the eyes and he went down headlong, the lantern rolling into a corner. Jim knew nothing of what followed. He was on top of the Feldwebel, pounding his head on the floor; prepared, in his agony of despair, to do as much damage as possible before his brief dash for freedom ended. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder, and heard Desmond's sharp whisper.

"Steady—he's unconscious. Let me look at him, Linton."

Jim, still astride his capture, sat back, and Desmond flashed the Feldwebel's own lantern into that hero's face.

"H'm, yes," he said. "Hit his head against something. He's stunned, anyhow. What are we going to do with him?"

"Is he the only one?" Jim asked.

"It seems like it. But there may be another at any moment. We've got to go on; if he wakes up he'll probably be able to identify you." He felt in his pocket, and produced a coil of strong cord. "Come along, Linton—get off and help me to tie him up."

They tied up the unconscious Feldwebel securely, and lifted him into the cupboard among the brooms, gagging him in case he felt inclined for any outcry on coming to his senses. The others had gone ahead, and were already in the tunnel; with them, one of the four disabled officers, whose job it was to close up the hole at the entrance and dismantle the electric light, in the faint hope that the Germans might fail to discover their means of escape, and so leave it free for another party to try for freedom. He stood by the yawning hole, holding one end of a string by which they were to signal from the surface, if all went well. The wistfulness of his face haunted Jim long afterwards.

"Good-bye, old man," he said cheerily, gripping Jim's hand. "Good luck."

"I wish you were coming, Harrison," Jim said, unhappily.

"No such luck. Cheero, though: the war won't last for ever. I'll see you in Blighty." They shook hands again, and Jim dived into the tunnel.

He knew every inch of it, and wriggled quickly along until the top of his head encountered the boots of the man in front of him, after which he went more slowly. There seemed a long delay at the end—long enough to make him break into a sweat of fear lest something should have gone wrong. Such thoughts come easily enough when you are lying full length in black darkness, in a hole just large enough to hold a man; in air so stifling that the laboured breath can scarcely come; with the dank earth just under mouth and nose, and overhead a roof that may fall in at any moment. The dragging minutes went by. Then, just as despair seized him, the boots ahead moved. He wriggled after them, finding himself praying desperately as he went. A rush of sweet air came to him, and then a hand, stretching down, caught his shoulder, and helped him out.

It was faintly moonlight. They stood in a thick plantation of runner beans, trained on rough trellis-work, in a garden beyond the barbed-wire fence of the camp. The tunnel had turned sharply upwards at the end; they had brought with them some boards and other materials for filling it up, and now they set to work furiously, after giving the signal with the string to Harrison; the three sharp tugs that meant "All Clear!" The boards held the earth they shovelled in with their hands; they stamped it flat, and then scattered loose earth on top, with leaves and rubbish, working with desperate energy—fearing each moment to hear the alarm raised within the barrack. Finally all but Desmond gained the beaten earth of the path, while he followed, trying to remove all trace of footprints on the soft earth. He joined them in a moment.

"If they don't worry much about those beans for a few days they may not notice anything," he said. "Come along."

So often had they studied the way from behind the barbed-wire that they did not need even the dim moonlight. They hurried through the garden with stealthy strides, bending low behind a row of currant-bushes, and so over a low hedge and out into a field beyond. There they ran; desperately at first, and gradually slackening to a steady trot that carried them across country for a mile, and then out upon a highroad where there was no sign of life. At a cross-roads two miles further on they halted.

"We break up here," Desmond said. "You can find your cache all right, you think, Baylis?"

"Oh, yes," Baylis nodded. It had been thought too dangerous for so many to try to escape together, so two hiding-places of clothes and food had been arranged. Later they would break up again into couples.

"Then we'd better hurry. Good night, you fellows, and good luck. We'll have the biggest dinner in Blighty together—when we all get there!"

"Good luck!"

Baylis led his party down a road to the east, and Jim, Fullerton and Marsh struck south after Desmond, who paused now and then to consult a rough map, by a pocket-lamp. On and on, by a network of lanes, skirting farmhouses where dogs might bark; flinging themselves flat in a ditch once, when a regiment of Uhlans swept by, unconscious of the gasping fugitives a few yards away. Jim sat up and looked after their retreating ranks.