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By Root 3848 0

axles...and yet, whilst you hardly breathed, in the thick darkness some damn thing would always chink and jolt; beef tins made a noise of old iron...And bang, after a long whine, would come the German shell, registered exactly on to the corner of the road where it went down by the shoulder of the hill: where the placards were ordering you not to go more than two men together...Imagine doing it with lorries, that could be heard five miles away!...The battalion would go pretty short of rations!...The same antichevaline genius had emitted the sentiment that he had rather the Allies lost the war than that cavalry should distinguish themselves in any engagement!...A wonderful passion for the extermination of dung...! Or perhaps this hatred of the horse was social...Because the cavalry wear long moustaches dripping with Macassar oil and breakfast off caviare, chocolate and Pommery Greno they must be abolished!...Something like that...He exclaimed: 'By God! How my mind wanders! How long will it go on?' He said: 'I am at the end of my tether.' He had missed what the general had said for some time.

The general said:

'Well. Has he?'

Tietjens said:

'I didn't catch, sir!'

'Are you deaf?' the general asked. 'I'm sure I speak plain enough. You've just said there are no horses attached to this camp. I asked you if there is not a horse for the colonel commanding the depot...A German horse, I understand!'

Tietjens said to himself:

'Great heavens! I've been talking to him. What in the world about?' It was as if his mind were falling off a hillside. He said:

'Yes, sir...Schomburg. But as that's a German prisoner, captured on the Marne, it is not on our strength. It is the private property of the colonel. I ride it myself...'

The general exclaimed dryly:

'You would...' He added more dryly still: 'Are you aware that there is a hell of a strafe put in against you by a R.A.S.C. second-lieutenant called Hotchkiss?...'

Tietjens said quickly:

'If it's over Schomburg, sir...it's a washout. Lieutenant Hotchkiss has no more right to give orders about him than as to where I shall sleep...And I would rather die than subject any horse for which I am responsible to the damnable torture Hotchkiss and that swine Lord Beichan want to inflict on service horses...'

The general said maleficently:

'It looks as if you damn well will die on that account!'

He added: 'You're perfectly right to object to wrong treatment of horses. But in this case your objection blocks the only other job open to you.' He quietened himself a little. 'You are probably not aware,' he went on, 'that your brother Mark...'

Tietjens said:

'Yes, I am aware...'

The general said: 'Do you know that the 19th Division to which your brother wants you sent is attached to Fourth Army now--and it's Fourth Army horses that Hotchkiss is to play with?...How could I send you there to be under his orders?'

Tietjens said:

'That's perfectly correct, sir. There is nothing else that you can do...' He was finished. There was now nothing left but to find out how his mind was going to take it. He wished they could go to his cook-houses!

The general said:

'What was I saying?...I'm dreadfully tired...No one could stand this...' He drew from inside his tunic a lapis-lazuli coloured, small be-coroneted note-case and selected from it a folded paper that he first looked at and then slipped between his belt and his tunic. He said: 'On top of all the responsibility I have to bear!' He asked: 'Has it occurred to you that, if I'm of any service to the country, your taking up my energy--sapping my energy over your affairs!--is aiding your country's enemies?...I can only afford four hours sleep as it is...I've got some questions to ask you...He referred to the slip of paper from his belt, folded it again and again slipped it into his belt.

Tietjens' mind missed a notch again...It was the fear of the mud that was going to obsess him. Yet, curiously, he had never been under heavy fire in mud...You would think that that would not have obsessed him. But in his ear he had just heard uttered in a whisper